Morning Report: March 8, 2005

Bush stands firm on democracy. President Bush reiterated his support for democracy at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, saying "We are confident that the desire for freedom, even when repressed for generations, is present in every human heart, and that desire can emerge with sudden power to change the course of history." A full transcript of the President's speech may be found here. Bush specifically mentioned the regimes in Iran and Syria. (CNN)

Pakistani women demonstrate against tribal rape. 'Thousands of women rallied in eastern Pakistan on Monday to demand justice and protection for a woman who said she was gang-raped at the direction of a village council, after a court ordered the release of her alleged attackers. The victim, Mukhtar Mai, also attended the rally in Multan, a major city in the eastern province of Punjab,' according to this AP story by Khalid Tanveer. 'In June 2002, Mai said she was raped by four men on the orders of a village council that wanted to punish her family. Mai's brother was accused of having sex with a woman from a more prominent family, though Mai's family says the allegations were fabricated to cover up a sexual assault against the boy by several men. Mai, a 33-year-old school teacher, went public about her ordeal, drawing international media attention to widespread crimes against women in ultraconservative Pakistan. The government also pledged to track down her attackers. A court later sentenced six men to death for Mai's rape. An appeals court overturned the convictions of five of the men last week, citing lack of evidence, and reduced the other man's sentence to life in prison.' Read the full story at the link. (AP/Yahoo via LGF)

Questions surround McCain, Cablevision. CNN reports: 'A senator promotes a government policy sought by a corporation while a tax-exempt group closely tied to him solicits and gets $200,000 from the same company. Campaign finance watchdogs say that creates the appearance of a conflict of interest. To their surprise, the senator is Arizona Republican John McCain, whom they usually praise for advocating campaign finance restrictions. McCain's help to Cablevision Systems Corp. included letting its CEO testify before his Senate committee, writing a letter of support to the Federal Communication Commission and asking other cable companies to support so-called a la carte pricing.' Kent Cooper of Political Money Line said: "Senator McCain derives a clear benefit by using The Reform Institute to help the debate on campaign finance reform. His McCain-Feingold bill helped break the connection between members of Congress and large contributions. Here is an example of a large contribution going to the foundation connected with a member of Congress. I don't see a difference." (CNN)

Giuliana Sgrena

I don't have anything to contribute yet on the Italian hostage who was injured, with one of her bodyguards killed, by US gunfire while crossing a checkpoint. Suffice it to say I have a healthy amount of skepticism for this woman's story; but I'll wait till a few more facts are in before weighing in with an opinion of my own.

An Italian blogger who does have something to say - and who's always worth listening to - is Stefania Lapenna of Free Thoughts. If you're reading this as a current post, go to her main page at the link and scroll through her blog for coverage of the Sgrena story; in any event, don't miss this post on Sgrena.

Armanious - Garas Killings: Suspects Caught

Two men have been arrested and charged in connection with the murders of Hossam Armanious, Amal Garas, and their daughters; the motive appears to have been robbery. The Star-Ledger reports:

In the days after an Egyptian immigrant couple and their two daughters were stabbed to death in their Jersey City home, the two ex-convicts now charged with their murders went on with the routine of their lives.

Edward McDonald, 25, along with his wife and two young daughters, spent three nights sleeping in the apartment directly upstairs from the rooms where the four bodies lay. Over the next seven weeks, he dutifully showed up at his job paving parking lots.

Hamilton Sanchez, 30, continued commuting between the Newark halfway house where he was finishing a federal sentence and his job cutting hair at Sweets barbershop, a hangout for artists and rappers in downtown Jersey City.

But there was one difference.

Once a day or so, starting on Jan. 12, prosecutors say one of the suspects or someone connected with them would visit a Bank of America branch and withdraw a few hundred dollars -- using an ATM card belonging to Hossam Armanious, who had been stabbed to death along with his wife and children on Jan. 11. ...

Read the full article at the link. There are just a couple of things I want to comment on:

"There were so many different theories put on the table early on, some by law enforcement and some by the public," said Joseph Billy, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Newark office. "There was hate written all over this crime, in terms of violence and magnitude. But at the same time, there was nothing coming on to the investigators' table that suggested this was done by any kind of extremism, beyond the violence of it."

The violence of it -- the fact that Armanious, 47, his wife Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, all had been bound, gagged and stabbed to death -- led the victims' relatives and friends to believe simple robbery could not have been the motive.

But prosecutors say the killings were committed to cover up a robbery after Monica recognized one of the masked intruders as McDonald, the tenant from the apartment upstairs.

As Special Agent Joseph Billy's word suggest, it was reasonable for law officers - and the public - to consider that this might have been a hate crime. But it now seems clear that the killing was not, in fact, a hate crime, but rather an egregiously horrific robbery without any religious motivation.

DeFazio said his investigators were looking into financial motives from the start. But he also said rumors that Armanious, a devout Coptic Christian, had received death threats from Muslims in a religious chat room proved a "hindrance" to the investigation.

"It had to be looked into, we had no choice," he said. "But certainly there were resources dedicated to that which maybe could have been used for other purposes."

Read the whole article at the link.

Meanwhile, Maria Sliwa at Chronwatch has an interesting update on the New Jersey Coptic Christian murders, which includes an interview with Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio. Apparently written shortly before the arrest of McDonald and Sanchez, Sliwa's article portrays a defensive prosecutor who refuses to discuss a possible religious motive in the killings. Sliwa confronts DeFazio with the allegation that Robert Spencer, director of JihadWatch.org, provided DeFazio's office with detailed information on possible suspects, which the Prosecutor ignored:

Spencer says he obtained information, from sources close to the murders, that the Halal butcher [whose daughter Sylvia Armanious had encouraged to convert to Christianity] had planned the killings for months and that several of his accomplices are still in the country. Spencer says police are investigating.  But when DeFazio was asked about the information his office was provided, he said: “None of that was given any credence by any law enforcement agencies. Our office has not received any names.”   But Spencer gave the Hudson County Prosecutor’s office very detailed information, (names, locations and phone numbers) of the alleged murderers and their accomplices.  When reminded of this, DeFazio then said that he did receive this information, but he appeared uncertain if all those named were questioned before this avenue of investigation was closed. 

DeFazio is certain about one thing. All talk of religious extremism is off limits. “This case has nothing to do with religious extremism,” he said.  “And if you keep asking these questions, I won’t continue with the interview.” 

Sliwa's article may also be found at FrontPage.

More on this as it develops.

Fred Durst, Paris Hilton, Jeff Gannon

Romanian folk dance artist Gary Brolsma, a fifteen-year-old female student at the Milton Academy in Massachusetts, Martha Stewart, Oliver Willis, Wonkette and Washingtonienne, beheadings of various farm animals, the sex life of the fruit fly, and anything related to thongs cannot be found at this link.

Have a great weekend!

Guardian Columnist Gets the Picture

Jonathan Freedland, writing in today's Guardian, shows courage and clear thinking on the Middle East:

Tony Blair is not gloating. He could - but he prefers to appear magnanimous in what he hopes is victory. In our Guardian interview yesterday, he was handed a perfect opportunity to crow. He was talking about what he called "the ripple of change" now spreading through the Middle East, the slow, but noticeable movement towards democracy in a region where that commodity has long been in short supply. I asked him whether the stone in the water that had caused this ripple was the regime change in Iraq.

He could have said yes, insisting that events had therefore proved him right and the opponents of the 2003 war badly wrong. But he did not. ...

Freedland understands that "it cannot be escaped: the US-led invasion of Iraq has changed the calculus in the region," and that "this leaves opponents of the Iraq war in a tricky position". He offers some sobering advice for the Left, and warns against "opposing democracy in the Middle East simply because Bush and Blair are calling for it." Read the whole thing at the link. Hat tip: The Corner.

Sudan Report

US Senators call for action. AllAfrica.com reports that a group of US Senators has called on the Bush administration to take immediate action on Sudan, introducing the Darfur Accountability Act: 'A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is calling for immediate action by the administration of President George W. Bush and the U.N. Security Council to stop the violence in Darfur. Senators Jon Corzine and Sam Brownback, who led the successful effort last summer to enact a resolution finding that Khartoum and Arab militias, called Janjaweed, in Darfur were committing "genocide" against the African population in the region, introduced the Darfur Acountability Act (DAA) Wednesday, along with six other Republican and Democratic senators. The Act, which is non-binding, calls for a new U.N. Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against the Sudanese government; the extension of an arms embargo against unofficial groups in Darfur to Khartoum itself; a freeze of assets and the denial of visas to those responsible for the killings; enhanced support for an African Union observer mission in the region; the appointment of a presidential envoy for Sudan; and the imposition of a no-fly zone over Darfur.' The article goes on to cite differences over the proper venue for future human-rights trials (the International Criminal Court or an African court). The article also notes criticism of the Bush administration, which 'has not yet applied all of the bilateral sanctions against the government that Congress authorised last fall. In particular, it has failed so far to publish a list of individuals in the government and the Janjaweed whose assets Congress asked to be frozen. In addition, the administration has not asked the Security Council to modify the AU force's mandate to include protection of civilians.' Read the full article at the link. (AllAfrica.com)

Kristof: Eyewitness to genocide. Nick Kristof writes this harrowing account in the International Herald Tribune: 'American soldiers are trained to shoot at the enemy. They're prepared to be shot at. But what young men like Brian Steidle are not equipped for is witnessing a genocide but being unable to protect the civilians pleading for help. If President George W. Bush wants to figure out whether the United States should stand more firmly against the genocide in Darfur, I suggest that he invite Steidle to the White House to give a briefing. Steidle, 28, a former Marine captain, was one of just three U.S. military advisers for the African Union monitoring team in Darfur - and he is bursting with frustration. "Every single day you go out to see another burned village, and more dead bodies," he said. "And the children - you see 6-month-old babies that have been shot, and 3-year-old kids with their faces smashed in with rifle butts. And you just have to stand there and write your reports." ... ' (IHT)

Janjaweed leader: Sudan regime ordered killings. Meera Selva of The Independent (UK) quotes warlord Musa Hilal as saying that the Sudanese regime in Khartoum asked him to provide killers: 'A powerful Sudanese sheikh, widely regarded as a senior leader of the Janjaweed militia, has said that the Sudanese government in Khartoum asked him to supply fighters to attack civilians in Darfur. Musa Hilal, described the by the US State Department as a Janjaweed co-ordinator, said the government had asked him to mobilise the 300,000 tribesmen he claims to be responsible for. In an interview with Human Rights Watch, he said: "The government has told us to mobilise people. We've gone to the people to tell them to join the PDF [militia] and defend your country, defend the land, defend the country's most important things, and that you have to fight for your survival and the country's stability." The Sudanese government has always said the violence in Darfur was caused by ancient tribal rivalries, and that it had never encouraged or supported one side over the other. It has also promised repeatedly to disarm the militias in Darfur and blamed the continuing violence in the region on its inability to bring the groups under control. But Mr Hilal said the government had the ability to disarm the PDF - a paramilitary group that is part of the Janjaweed - if it chose to do so. He said: "They [The government] are the ones that gave the PDF guns. They're the ones that recruited the PDF; they're the ones that pay their salaries; they give them their ID cards. They can disarm them or they can leave them alone ... ' (The Independent)

Kind words for al-Jazeera ...

... from an unlikely source.

"the liberal left as the new incarnation of the John Birch Society"

Don't miss this great piece by Marc Cooper Dreaming of Elephants - Thinking of Jackasses and be sure to follow the comments.

Hat tip: Roger L. Simon.

Letter from al-Sana'a Jail

Jane Novak at Armies of Liberation posts the following:

**********BLOGOSPHERE EXCLUSIVE**************
************Dissident watch**************


Dear Friends and Fellow Freedom Lovers,
I never thought I’d get to use the stars but we the blogosphere recieved the following letter from Mr. Abdulkarim al-Khaiwani smuggled out of the central prison in Sana’a, Yemen.

I have been advocating for his release since his imprisonment in September as I am convinced that he is a politcal prisoner. He is a newspaper editor, a pro-democracy advocate, and a Yemeni patriot. There are several articles on my sidebar that explain his case more fully.

Kindly read his letter, portions of which are deleted as he is already in jail for insulting the president. If upon hearing from him directly, you wish to stand in solidarity with this man, kindly sign this petition. Futhermore, please feel free to copy the letter to your site. Link to the petition not to me.

On March 20th, I will deliver a hard copy of the petition to the Yemeni Embassy in New York, with an email copy to the UN representative and a fax copy to President Salah in Yemen. For more details on the case, the sidebar at the petition site links both the World Association of Newspaper Editors protest letter and the Amnesty Internation Appeal page. The Amnesty page carries his photo. Lets see what the blogosphere can do here.


Dear Ms. Jane Novack,
The American journalist and political analyst,

I hereby express my deepest gratitude and most sincere thanks from behind the bars of the central prison in Sana’a, the capital of Republic of Yemen, for your articles on the freedom of press issues including my imprisonment.

Your opinions have genuinely touched my and the reader’s conscience as you have expressed your commitment to support issues of rights and freedoms and emphasized the true understanding of the Middle East issue. Hence you know well that freedom, democracy, and equality are the key solutions to the region’s problems.


Ms. Jane,

Since fifteen years, we have experienced democracy and multi-party system as well as breathed the fresh air of freedom, all which are the achievements of Yemen Unification. Soon later, a regression occurred in this experience after the summer of 1994 civil war. These achievements were emptied from their core cause leaving a margin of press freedom through which we battled to defend democracy, freedom, human rights, equal citizenship, and independent judiciary system, all being conditions for a better future and means to combat corruption and absence of law.

############ force, power, and oppression####### neglecting concepts of separation of powers. The head of the judiciary system is the president of the republic############ Here I am, in a battle which can least be described as unfair. My crime is public humiliation of the president. My rival has all powers in his hand ########### I was deprived even from my right to self-defense. ########### you can imagine how I was handled by prison and police officers.

Furthermore, solidarity with my issue was prohibited and people in solidarity were punished and even terrorized to visit me in prison or declare their solidarity. In addition, the journalists’ syndicate is falling under tremendous pressures. I believe in democracy, freedom, equality and rights and am willing to sacrifice for their sake simply because I do not wish my children to suffer dictatorship and I will strive to provide them with a better future.


Dear Madam,

Leaders in our region transform into Gods. They even become to believe in their fake holiness which we aim to shatter so that they know they are humans just like us. Democracy and freedom are not granted by a leader or a regime, it is a world-wide human achievement of all the free people on earth.

According to the official interpretation of what is considered criticism of the president - based on this fake holiness- my criticism of the president is a crime that can cost me my life , not necessarily through Justice, but probably in prison by a murder convict. This could be attempted again inside or outside prison at any time. Nevertheless, I am not occupied by this matter, but more occupied with deep-rooting the concept of freedom.

I am also concerned that all Yemeni journalist gain the legal commitment of not being prone to imprisonment because of their opinions. I am also concerned that no other journalist will be imprisoned after me and suffer all that I have suffered. This we can achieve through your support and the support of all democracy and freedom advocates in the world as individuals or organizations.


Dear Madam,

Democracy and freedom are the global language with which I address you, probably too intimately and in detail which might have inconvenienced you. But, my trust in your values and your openness encouraged me to convene this information on our reality and issues to you. I highly value your writings and your advocacy role to democracy and defending rights. ###########

I repeat my thanks to you Ms. Jane Novack, and apologize for consuming your precious time in reading this letter.

With my sincere regards,

Abdul Kareem Al Khaiwany
Central Prison- Sana’a
14/2/2005


(This letter was sent through ############)

At Jane's request, I'm not posting a permalink, but as always I encourage you to visit her excellent blog (there's a link on my sidebar). Most important, though, is that you SIGN THIS PETITION TO PRESIDENT SALEH FOR THE RELEASE OF ABDUL KAREEM AL-KHAIWANI.

Thanks!

Alaa: We Won't Turn the Other Cheek Forever

Alaa at The Mesopotamian writes in response to the recent terrorist bombing:

Almost all the important western and international capitals issued their condemnation and expressed their condolences and sympathies on the occasion of the carnage that took place in Hilla. Only the [other] Arabs were quiet and nothing was heard from them. So, it seems that the blood of Iraqis does not concern them much, or worst still, perhaps they were secretly pleased and gratified at the event. Now, this is very serious. It is disturbing. Add to it that almost everybody in Iraq is firmly convinced that the perpetrators of suicide attacks in particular are all non-Iraqi Arabs albeit with the collusion of some Iraqis, you can understand the general feeling towards the Arab “brothers” that is dominating the Iraqi street right now.

The tragedy is that our problem does not seem to be with the regimes only, but also with the ordinary people themselves of these Arab countries. And this also recalls to mind the cheering crowds that greeted the news of 9/11 of the murder of thousands of innocent civilians in the U.S.; this is serious friends; this is very serious.

Anyway, as far as we are concerned; we assure you that revenge will come and those responsible for these horrors will be punished; though the majority of the people are showing the fortitude and patience of early Christians. Because, you see, we know exactly where these criminals are, which tribes they belong to, where are the filthy huts they are living in. We know that these are and have been bandits and murderers from time immemorial. ...

Read the whole post at the link.

Morning Report: March 1, 2005

Lebanese government resigns; president next target of protests. The Prime Minister of Lebanon and his cabinet resigned Monday, amid growing pro-democracy and anti-Syrian protests. Today, the protesters demanded the President's resignation. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a conference in London: "The Syrians are out of step with where the region is going." Dr. Rice was joined by French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier in calling on Syria to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 1559 and withdraw its 15,000 troops and its political presence from Lebanon. Big Pharaoh reports that a statue of Hafez Assad was pulled down in Lebanon. Follow GM's Arabic-language link, too - a picture is worth a thousand words. (Fox, Big Pharaoh)

US Supreme Court strikes down juvenile death penalty. "The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest," wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision banning capital punishment for juvenile offenders. (CNN)

N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday was born on February 27, 1934 (a birth date he shares with Ralph Nader) in Oklahoma. One of America's foremost poets, he's best known for The Way to Rainy Mountain, which is probably my single favorite long poetical work. The family name (adopted in his father's day) was originally Mamedaty, as NSM records in his memoir The Names:

At four o'clock in the morning of February 27, 1934, in the Kiowa and Comanche Indian Hospital at Lawton, Oklahoma, near the old stone corral at Fort Sill, where my ancestors were imprisoned in 1873 for having fled to the last buffalo range in the Staked Plains, I was delivered into the world by an elderly Indian Service doctor who entered my name on the Standard Certificate of Birth as Novarro Scotte Mammedaty ("Momaday" having first been entered, then crossed out).

Momaday quotes the wording of his birth certificate, which duly observes that he is "of 7/8 degree Indian blood", and which cites the 1924 Act by which the US Congress generously extended American citizenship to the descendents of the country's early inhabitants.

Momaday is interviewed in the current issue of The Seattle Review. The interview was conducted in 2003, at the poet's family home in New Mexico. Momaday recalls that he wanted to be a writer from childhood: "I said, 'Mom, I'm going to be "a writer"'". As a young adult he hung out with other literary people and admired Dylan Thomas, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, and Wallace Stevens.

In the interview he doesn't express a lot of political anger as an Indian, but he is

alarmed by the loss of that cultural identity. The loss of language, the loss of ceremonies, the loss of relationship with elders. All of that is happening very suddenly, and the move to urban centers, all of that is costing the Indian his cultural identity. So the Buffalo Trust was created to do something about that, to reverse that trend.

Momaday speaks of his visit to the Athabascan communities near the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge:

Small village, subsisting ... 80 percent of their diet is caribou. And what we're doing up there is upsetting the balance of nature, and interfering with the migrations of the caribou, so things are changing.

Momaday's shorter poems are collected in volumes like In the Presence of the Sun, which is also illustrated by the poet. (NSM is also - like his father Al Momaday - an artist.) Some of my favorites include "New World" (written entirely in disyllabic lines), "The Delight Song of Tsoai-Talee" (a reference to NSM's Kiowa name), "Nous Avons Vu la Mer", "Rainy Mountain Cemetery", and "Prayer" (which invokes the name of his grandmother, Aho). The book also includes a series on Billy the Kid, and some delightful light poems and epigrams.

The Way to Rainy Mountain was first published in 1967-1969. Inspired by NSM's own pilgrimage, it tells the story of the Kiowas' historic migration from their original homeland in western Montana to the southern Plains. The Introduction recounts a legend surrounding Devil's Tower, Wyoming; it explains why "the Kiowas have kinsmen in the night sky" and is, I think, rather more compelling than "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". The poem itself consists of a braid of three interwoven strands of mythical, historical, and personal narrative, which gradually converge on the burial of the poet's grandmother. "If you stand on the front porch of the house and look eastward towards Carnegie, you know that the woman is buried somewhere within the range of your vision. But her grave is unmarked."

When my mother passed away almost two years ago, I went back to Connecticut to pay a last visit to the green suburban house that I grew up in. I read the first, sixteenth, and twenty-fourth cantos of The Way to Rainy Mountain aloud as a tribute to her. One of the things I love about literature is its power to remind us of the parts of our own lives, of our own selves, that we must keep alive - the almost-forgotten places, the hidden landscapes,

the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.