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.

Tel Aviv Terrorist Bombing

The names of the victims: Itzik Buzaglo, 40, from the Galilee moshav of Mishmar Hayarden; Yael Orbach, 28, from Rehovot; Aryeh "Arik" Nagar, 36, from Kfar Sava (Kfar Saba); Ronen Rubenov, 28, of Tel Aviv.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters writes on Israel's decision to suspend a planned prisoner exchange in protest:

Now that Sharon has frozen even the preliminary releases, the militants have all the excuse they need to declare open season on Israeli citizens again, and Abbas can blame the intransigence of the Israelis for the collapse of the cease fire. Abbas may make some preliminary noise about taking action against the militants, but in a short period of time he will lay the blame against Sharon ...

Read the whole ... well, you get the idea.

UPDATE: Are you following the story at Regime Change Iran? This great new blog deserves everyone's attention. They have the latest scoop on a possible Tehran connection.

Melissa Q&A

Melissa Etheridge answers questions in a respected New York newspaper:

QSharon Blynn, Manhattan, founder of Baldisbeautiful.org, writer, actress, model, ovarian-cancer survivor: Given society's narrow notions about what is beauty and what is feminine, how did you react when you faced losing your hair and, possibly, your breasts?

MBecause I'm a lesbian, my experi ence might be a little different from a heterosexual woman. I felt less feminine before the cancer. I am more in contact with my femininity now. When I see pictures of me bald, I realize I am more feminine with my head shaved than I've ever been. I thought this was really going to butch me up — but it didn't. It brought out my femininity. ...

QCassandra G. Perry, Manhattan, cancer-support specialist: When I saw you on TV, you said you were going to eliminate everything toxic from your life. How will you do that — and how can I?

MYou start on a small level and then you expand. The toxicity may be a relationship, stress or the kind of food you're eating — you have to look at your whole life. ...

QMary Murphy, Queens, home maker, breast-cancer survivor: Are you religious? How does breast cancer affect your spiritual life?

MI regard religion and spirituality as two separate things. I'm not reli gious, but I'm very spiritual. This cancer journey has locked in my spirituality and opened up my mind. I'm not afraid to die anymore. I understand the human spirit more, and that's separate from the human body. ...

Read the whole thing at the link.

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)

Iranian Conversions to Zoroastrianism

Iranians living abroad are rallying to the faith of Zoroaster, this fascinating thread at Free Iran reports. Spenta launches the tread with this item:

On the 1st of August 2004 (Dei be Mehr, Amordaad 3742), we organized a conversion ceremony for a group of Iranians who desired for years to convert to Zoroastrianism (Zartoshti). The initiation took place at Radisson SAS Hotel in Norway and was performed traditionally by Zoroastrian Mobed. Participants (Nozoodan) were crying of happiness while reading the promise and the Avesta of Koshti. Relatives and friends were also gathered to celebrate their return to roots and share their joy and happiness. ...

Go read the whole thing at the link.

Saddam's Half-Brother Captured

Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti, a half-brother of Saddam Hussein on his mother's side and a close aide to the deposed dictator, has been captured, Iraqi officials said. CNN reports:

Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti was No. 36 on the U.S. military's Iraqi 55 Most Wanted List, and one of only 12 people on the list who remained free.

A half-brother on Hussein's mother's side, al-Tikriti held many positions in his regime, the latest being that of Hussein's personal adviser.

There is evidence that al-Tikriti was financing insurgents in the post-Saddam era, an Iraqi intelligence official told CNN.

His son, Omar Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Tikriti, was known as a high-ranking Ba'athist and was active in the "General Union of Iraqi Students and Youth." ...

Matrix Dominatrix

That famous photo of Condi Rice can be found here at Instapundit. Kesher Talk has a good roundup. I think Judith is too kind to the Washington Post's idiocy, but the quote from Aaron is a must-read.

The Manolo, he is posting here.