Morning Report: March 14, 2005

Debka: Washington's grand design. Israeli-based analysis site Debka offers its report on US plans for the Middle East. Debka sees parallels between the Bush Administration's uncompromising stance on Syria and its firm demands on Israel: 'Administration leaders seem to be treating Israel’s pull-back from the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the same spirit as their insistence on complete Syrian military withdrawal from Lebanon. It is possible to conjure up a grand design charted by the Bush administration to simultaneously squeeze Israel and Syria into sharply constricted molds sized by its perception of the two nations’ true dimensions.' The report details a quiet, multilateral agreement among the US, UK, Egypt, and Jordan to jointly administer the West Bank (US/Jordan) and Gaza Stip (UK/Egypt). It also explores the ramifications of Bush's "Road Map" plan, which demands the removal of illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory, and which much of the Israeli Right - including Debka's editors - have adamently opposed. Read the full article at the link. (Debka)

Debka: Washington vs. Iran regime. Also at Debka, a report on US actions against the IRI regime in Iran. The report (also posted at Regime Change Iran) indicates that joint US/Israeli missile-defense exercises - a biennial operation codenamed Juniper Cobra - will, this year, reflect a perception of 'possibility of an Iranian Shehab-3 missile reaching Israel in the near future armed with a nuclear warhead.' Debka notes that the US actions are not only defensive, concluding: 'The United States, according to our military sources, is pressing ahead with its development of infrastructure for an Iranian underground opposition. A Revolutionary Guard unit in Hur al-Azim, near the Iraqi border, recently captured a band smuggling thousands of handguns into Iran. In recent months, thousands of rifles and masses of ammunition have got through to Iranian tribes near the Iraqi frontier. These tribes have a long history of rebellion against central government in Tehran and are practiced in guerrilla tactics.' (Debka via RCI)

Talks between United Iraqi Coalition and Kurdish Alliance collapse. Iraq the Model reports that negotiations between the Kurdish Alliance and the United Iraqi Coalition have collapsed, with UIC leader Ahmed Chalabi finding KA's demands "unrealistic". (ITM)

Meeting Michael Totten

I met Michael Totten this afternoon - for the first, and, I hope, not the last time. Judith at Kesher Talk had invited me to join the NYC LiberalHawks mailing list, and (with disarming naivete) suggested I start a similar group here in Portland, perhaps beginning with MJT. I promised her I would see what I could do, not having the heart to inform her that Portland is not quite, exactly, precisely, New York City.

Michael was kind enough to respond to my invitation, saying that he didn't know of anyone else besides himself and his friend Sean LaFreniere, but would I like to get together for coffee some time? So we met this afternoon, for some two and a half hours, at World Cup Coffee on 18th and Glisan.

Michael is an energetic, articulate speaker. He talked about his awakening to the sickness of leftism in the wake of 9/11 - "it took me one week". Recalling the thrill of his college protest days, he grinned - "I was a moonbat!" We talked about how intoxicating the college experience or the youth counterculture can be for a young person escaping the confines of an upbringing in small-town Oregon, suburban Connecticut, or anyplace else. He pointed out how important it is for young adults to have that kind of intellectual and cultural stimulation.

Both of us share a certain sense of social alienation in being pro-Bush liberals in an anti-Bush environment. I guess I'm fortunate here because I've only been living in Portland five years and I don't have a lifetime of ties to the Northwest; so it's a little easier for me to decide I can do as I damn well please. (In a particularly defiant period last fall, I took to wearing my BUSH/CHENEY '04 sweatshirt to places like Whole Foods and Powell's Books.) And after comparing experiences, we found that the reactions from our friends to our "coming out" as Bush supporters were generally much less hostile than the worries conjured up by our imaginations would have had us believe. (Now, you have to understand that Michael is no lightweight.) To this day, the only overtly hostile reaction I've gotten was from the woman (an anthropology professor, no less!) who walked out on a date, flinging twenty dollars on the table and proclaiming, "I don't eat with people who vote for Bush!"

The internet is great, but it's no subsitute for meeting people in real life and having face-to-face conversations. I think it's especially important for pro-freedom folks to be assertive about their beliefs in social circles whenever possible - remember, whatever inconveniences you or I might face, it's nothing compared to what the brave dissidents in the Middle East are risking by speaking out. And, as I said to Michael, we base a lot of our judgments on the cues we pick up in face-to-face interaction; so expressing our views in person is often more effective than writing them electronically. And as the protesters in Lebanon have shown, there's power in numbers. So I'm looking forward to that meeting with Portland's pro-freedom, pro-Bush liberals.

All three of us.

Guns don't shoot people. Cats do.

Just your typical cat-shoots-man story.

Boom!

I am reliably informed that Mount Saint Helens has erupted. I'll keep you posted with the latest from Herculaneum.

UPDATE: KIRO-TV News reports: 'A large plume of steam is being emitted this afternoon from the crater of Mount Saint Helens. The plume was accompanied by an earthquake of about 2-point-zero magnitude. ...' Read the story at the link.

UPDATE 2: Photos here. Hat tip: LGF.

Judith Attends Columbia Conference on Anti-Semitism

Judith of Kesher talk attended a conference on anti-Semitism held at Columbia University. She blogs about it here. Check out her links, too.

Sgrena's car, riddled with 300 to 400 bullets.

Photos at Little Green Footballs.

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.

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.

Morning Report: February 27, 2005

Arrests, condemnation follow Tel Aviv bombing. A Friday night terrorist bombing at the nightclub "The Stage" in Tel Aviv claimed the lives of four victims. The Jerusalem Post reports: 'Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Sunday that Islamic Jihad was behind the suicide bombing on Friday night in Tel Aviv. Issuing a short statement at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting in response to the attack, which cost the lives of four people and wounded some 50, Sharon said: "The orders came from Islamic Jihad in Syria. We know this for a fact."' Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz added that 'Islamic Jihad was directly responsible for the attack, taking its orders from Syria, and that its intent was to disrupt the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.' Debka reports: 'Israeli police on maximum terror alert. From Sunday, roadblocks at town entrances, special patrols at schools at crowd centers, transport terminals against at least 50 attacks known to be planned by Palestinian terrorists.' A Washington Post article (appearing here in the San Francisco Chronicle) says: 'Palestinian and Israeli security forces arrested seven Palestinians on Saturday in connection with a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv the night before, while leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Syria asserted responsibility for the attack. Among those arrested were two brothers of the presumed bomber and the man who allegedly drove the bomber to the nightclub where he detonated explosives, killing himself and four others and wounding about 50 people, Israeli security sources said. Most of the casualties were young Israelis waiting in line to enter a karaoke bar called the Stage. Israeli security sources identified the bomber as Abdullah Badran, 21, an observant Muslim and university student from the West Bank village of Deir al- Ghusun, northeast of Tel Aviv on the so-called Green Line between the West Bank and Israel.' Arutz Sheva reports: 'Syria said Sunday afternoon that the suicide bombing Friday night in Tel Aviv "contradicts Syrian policy," harms peace efforts and "gives Israel a pretext to bash the peace process."' A news bulletin from Stratfor (subscription) says, 'Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Feb. 26 condemned the Feb. 25 Tel Aviv nightclub bombing, saying that "the Palestinian Authority will not stand silent in the face of this act of sabotage."' (various)

Russia, Iran conclude nuclear deal. Iranian regime and Russian interests found common ground in Tehran on Sunday, with the signing of a long-planned deal for the completion of the Bushehr nuclear facility. From Debka: 'Iran, Russia sign nuclear fuel deal in Tehran Sunday. DEBKAfile reports: Signing delayed 24 hours over Iran’s insistence on schedule for delivery which Moscow wanted to avoid. Russians now undertake to complete Bushehr reactor core by end of 2005. This was main point at issue in Bush-Putin summit.' (Debka)

Mubarak calls for election reform in Egypt. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has called for multiparty elections. '"The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will," Mubarak said in a televised speech at Menoufia University in the Nile Delta. Mubarak, 76, said the decision was rooted in his "full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy."' Big Pharaoh is astonished. 'I never imagined what President Mubarak said today. He asked the parliament to amend the Egyptian constitution to allow multiple candidates to run for the presidency. This means that Muabark will have opponents running against him. Now, I am not stupid nor am I living in la la land. Mubarak's decision today came after immense pressure from the US and the current earthquakes (the purple revolution in Iraq and the Hariri revolution in Lebanon) that shook the region days ago. However, I credit US pressure as the number one reason. Condoleezza Rice cancelled a trip to Egypt scheduled for next week because of the arrest of Ayman Nour and Mubarak's failure to "change". Well, it seems that Bush turned out to be bloody serious about this democracy in the Middle East thing. ... ' Read the full post at the link. (Washington Post, Big Pharaoh)