Muqtada al-Sadr, Please Call Your Office

Muqty's political career is not going particularly well.

Iraq the Model reports:

Muqtada's office in Najaf is on fire.
Right now there are bloody clashes in Najaf between the supporters of Muqtada Al-Sadr and the residents of the city.
The clashes started after Al-Sadr men tried to reopen their office which has been closed for months but the locals attacked the office, set fire in it and clashed with Sadr's men.
The police forces intervened and the casualties till now are 7 killed and tens wounded.
I have received news saying that a curfew has been imposed in the city.

It's worth mentioning here that the governor prohibited demonstrations arranged by people from outside the city "who wants to demonstrate can go and do that in his own city" said the governor in a statement yesterday.

I was told in a phone call from a friend who lives there that gunfire can be heard right now in najaf.

As a reaction, a number of Sadrists suspended their membership in the National Assembly and warned from "serious consequences" accusing the governor and his party (the SCIRI) of being responsible for the tension in the city.

Update:

Al-Hurra just reported that the Najaf police force is exchanging gunfire with the followers of Muqtada Al-Sadr.
The militia men are now hiding and returning fire from the shrine of Imam Ali.

At the same time, the Badr organization (military wing of the SCIRI) denied connection with the conflict.

Update:

There are news about clashes extending to reach parts of Baghdad and apparently followers of Muqtada have attacked some offices tht belong to the Badr organization of the SCIRI while the news are confirming that the first clashes originated between the Sadrists and civilian residents.

On the other hand, the ministers of transport and health (both Sadrists) have suspended their membership in the government.

You might have heard something on the MSM about "clashes". This is what's happening. Stay tuned.

Watts at 40: John McWhorter on Rebellion

On the 40th anniversary of the Watts riots, John McWhorter has some reflections on the romance of rebellion in this Washington Post op-ed:

On Aug. 11, 1965, the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles broke out in flames on the nation's television screens. Many cherish the memory as the moment when the militant became mainstream in a "fed-up" black America, replacing the nonviolent, gradualist efforts of old-guard civil rights leaders. The Watts riot indeed shaped modern black American history more decisively than the Voting Rights Act. The question is whether it was in a good way.

In comparison with the polite sleeve-tugging and forms of nonviolent protest typical of the earlier civil rights generation, the sea change in 1965 may seem at first glance to have been an overdue response to the injustice that black America had endured for so long. But after researching the riot and the policies established in its aftermath, I have come to a different conclusion. In teaching poor blacks that picturesque battle poses were an "authentic" substitute for constructive intentions, the "Burn, Baby, Burn" ethos ultimately did more harm than good to a people who had already been through more than enough.
...
The Watts riot began when white police officers stopped an intoxicated black driver in South Central Los Angeles. He resisted arrest and was forcibly subdued. [Sounds awfully familiar. -aa] A rumor quickly spread that the officers had beaten a pregnant black woman, and a growing mob started throwing rocks and bottles at the cops. The incident snowballed into a five-day conflagration, with blacks destroying a thousand businesses. Thirty-four people died, more than 1,000 were hospitalized and nearly 4,000 were arrested.
...
The conventional wisdom at the time was that blacks were rebelling against the conditions they were forced to live in. I was born two months after Watts, but growing up, this was the justification I heard time and again.

But. There were a few things about the Watts riots, McWhorter says, that didn't quite add up. For starters, these were the first race riots instigated by blacks, and not by mobs of white bigots. And yet, "black rioters in Watts ruined black-owned businesses as lustily as white ones." Then there's another curious thing: "the worst riots happened in places where conditions for blacks were best" - nothing comparable to the Watts riots happened in Atlanta or Birmingham.

Not wishing to presume any further on the writings of a fellow word geek, I'll stop quoting here and let you go read the rest at the link. Pay attention as McWhorter describes the lethal mix of rebellion for its own sake and a carefully cultivated entitlement mentality, and the devastating effects this ideological "Molotov cocktail" had on African American society.

Revolution, Communism, and the legacy of racism are the subject of Neo's fascinating three-part study on Paul Robeson and his friendship with the ill-fated Russian Jewish poet Itzhak Feffer. Feffer - an early casualty of what probably would have become Stalin's "final solution" - desperately signaled his impending death to Robeson in their last meeting - but to no avail. Robeson kept quiet about Feffer, and - with the exception of a purely symbolic, and utterly useless, protest in the form of a Yiddish folksong he performed publicly - about Soviet Jewry in general. Some highlights from Neo's series:

The trajectory of Robeson's life is a highly cautionary tale of the ideological seduction of a gifted man by what was originally an idealistic dream, his failure to see the horror that dream had become, his severe moral compromise as a result, and the cost of that compromise to him and others. Robeson was a perfect example of just how very difficult it can be for a mind to change, no matter how insightful or otherwise intelligent that mind might be.

So it seems that Robeson's love for Communism was rooted in his idea that it was the antidote to the racism that had tormented this very proud man all his life. In this, of course, he was utterly mistaken, but it was a powerful dream that he could not relinquish: "Here, for the first time in my life...I walk in full human dignity." When push came to shove and Stalin's crimes became known, Robeson, like so many others, faced a choice between clinging to an ideal and rejecting that ideal because of the horrifically flawed reality that it had become. Like so many others, he clung to the power of the dream rather than face a harsh reality. (Once again, in describing this, I am not offering an excuse; merely an explanation. Robeson is responsible for his own moral failures.)

What is it that ultimately distinguishes those such as Robeson, who refuse to abandon the cause even in the face of incontrovertible evidence, from others who are able to renounce the cause in which they once believed? We cannot know for sure. But my guess would be that it depends partly on how deeply they need to believe (the deeper the need, the more difficult to face reality), and how much they have already compromised their own integrity in the service of that cause.

For some, perhaps the implications of having to face their own guilt are simply too great....

I'm not going to try to make a direct connection between Neo-Neocon's article on Robeson and John McWhorter's piece on the Watts riots; but I do think that they both provide insights into how the drive for justice and the quest for the greater, common good - both noble pursuits in themselves - can become distorted into an atavistic, destructive force that brings only destruction. Today's liberals would do well to pay attention.

Steven Vincent's Widow Responds to Professor Pondscum

Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, the widow of the journalist Steven Vincent who was recently murdered by paramilitary death squads in Iraq, has given Juan "Professor Pondscum" Cole a piece of her mind in response to the academician's attempted character assassination of Vincent:

Mr. Cole -
(I refuse to call you professor, because that would ennoble you. And please change the name of your blog to "Uninformed Comment", because that is precisely what the above paragraph is.)

I would like to refute this shameful post against a dead man who can no longer defend himself against your scurrilous accusations, a dead man who also happened to be my husband. Steven Vincent and I were together for 23 years, married for 13 of them, and I think I know him a wee bit better than you do.

For starters, Steven and Nour were not "romantically involved". If you knew anything at all about the Middle East, as you seem to think you do, then you would know that there is no physical way that he and she could have ever been alone together. Nour (who always made sure to get home before dark, so they were never together at night) could not go to his room; he could not go to her house; there was no hot-sheet motel for them to go to for a couple of hours. They met in public, they went about together in public, they parted in public. They were never alone. She would not let him touch her arm, pay her a compliment, buy her a banana on the street, hyper-aware of how such gestures might be interpreted by the misogynistic cretins who surrounded her daily. So for you brazenly claim that she was "sleeping around," when there is no earthly way you could possibly know that, suggests to me that you are quite the misogynist as well. Cheap shot, Mr. Cole, against a remarkable woman who does not in any wise deserve it. ...
Yes, Steven was aggressive in criticizing what he saw around him and did not like. It’s called courage, and it happens to be a tradition in the history of this country. Without this tradition there would have been no Revolutionary War, no Civil War, no civil rights movement, no a lot of things that America can be proud of. He had made many friends in Iraq, and was afraid for them if the religious fundamentalists were given the country to run under shari’a. You may dismiss that as naive, simplistic, foolish, but I say to you, as you sit safely in your ivory tower in Michigan with nothing threatening your comfy, tenured existence, that you should be ashamed at the depths to which you have sunk by libeling Steven and Nour. They were on the front lines, risking all, in an attempt to call attention to the growing storm threatening to overwhelm a fragile and fledgling experiment in democracy, trying to get the world to see that all was not right in Iraq. And for their efforts, Steven is dead and Nour is recuperating with three bullet wound in her back. Yes, that’s right - the “honorable” men who abducted them, after binding them, holding them captive and beating them, set them free, told them to run - and then shot them both in the back. I’ve seen the autopsy report.

You did not know him - you did not have that honor, and you will never have the chance, thanks to the murderous goons for whom you have appointed yourself an apologist.

Go read it all at the link. (Hat tip: LGF.)

As it happens, I was just talking with Michael Totten about the Middle East, and the subject of "Arabists" came up. Arabists are the subject of a book by Robert Kaplan; they are Westerners, often academicians, who not only study Middle Eastern culture but assimilate its values - and sometimes the worst of those values. Read Lisa Ramaci-Vincent's response to Juan Cole, to learn what people with REAL values believe in.

On Disengagement - from a Reader

The following is excerpted from an e-mail sent by a reader:

I'm an old lady, so as time passes I learn a lot. And, I've been observing both my president, George W. Bush, and Arik Sharon. And, I've discovered they could care less what the press says. Perhaps, Ronald Reagan was the last of the media giants? But it no longer matters.

With the Disengagement, Arik planned it well. He fired the heads that wouldn't cooperate. And, both the military and the police were trained to perfection. It's as if Arik learned everyone who wants to be on TV will operate like the nuts who show up to be televised on the Jerry Springer Show.

How sad for the Torah, really. It doesn't take much to realize our world has changed. And, only people who refuse to change manage to cling to age-old religions.

Did you know in the Diaspora Judiasm grew branches? Not just the ultra-orthodox; but the men and women who joined the greater society. Philosophers. Like my favorites: Spinoza. And, Martin Buber. And, there's the Conservative movement. And, the Reform movement. ...

Yet, I saw Arik's gifts above all of this. And, the decent way the IDF and the police went about disengaging from the very hostile place called gaza. (I also saw the earthquake that has been set off under the feet of the arabs. Who sat, amazed. Whose TVs also turned to the pictures that flashed out of the ordeal of separating a few from their homes. For the benefits ahead. That will probably include an influx of funds from America. To see the Negev invigorated with building projects. Why not think that in two years some settlers will be showing off new homes? Would they remember to apologize for the violence done in their names? I really don't know.

But I'm so proud of how Arik PLANNED this thing to be as successful as possible. While others thought he could be stopped in his tracks.

The world's changed. ...

Many thanks to Carol Herman in California who sent this in.

Breaking News on Iraqi Constitution

Iraq the Model reports:

National Assembly member Bahaa Al-Aaraji just told Al-Iraqia TV that an agreement has finally been reached among the leaders of political bodies on the final draft of the constitution and that disputes over issues like federalism, distribution of resources and the role of Islam have been solved.

"All we need now is a couple of hours to reprint the document and produce enough copies to submit them to all the members of the National Assembly to get theri approval later this evening…" Al-Aaraji explained.

Till now there has been no announcement from the head of the constitution drafting committee but Al-Iraqia reporter in the green zone is confirming the news.

UPDATE from ITM: "Regarding Islam and the constitution: it was agreed upon that no laws that are against the widely agreed upon values of Islam can be issued and no laws that are against the values of democracy and human rights can be issued."

Whatever that means. Sounds like politicians at work. Anyway, it looks like there's no immediate cause for panic over the prospect of a theocracy in Iraq. I really don't think the Iraqis would go for that.

UPDATE II: Michael Totten is worried: 'There is no silver lining here, no “bright side” to look on. It’s bad news, period.' Read full post at link.

Steyn: Sheehan vs. Sheehan - and the Democrats

Mark Steyn of the Chicago Sun-Times hits one out of the ballpark with this column:

Cindy Sheehan's son Casey died in Sadr City last year, and that fact is supposed to put her beyond reproach. For as the New York Times' Maureen Dowd informed us: ''The moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

Really? Well, what about those other parents who've buried children killed in Iraq? There are, sadly, hundreds of them: They honor their loved ones' service to the nation, and so they don't make the news. There's one Cindy Sheehan, and she's on TV 'round the clock. Because, if you're as heavily invested as Dowd in the notion that those "killed in Iraq" are "children," then Sheehan's status as grieving matriarch is a bonanza.

They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military ...

And it just gets better. Go and read the whole thing.

Help Abolish Slavery

There are things you can do to help make life better for enslaved people around the world. Here are some ideas.

Victoria Brownworth, one of my favorite columnists (even when I don't agree with her), has an important piece in the new print issue of Curve covering the problem of enslaved women and girls.

According to the United Nations and the British-based organization Anti-Slavery International, there are more people living in slavery today than at any other point in history. Almost 30 million adult slaves, including victims of human trafficking, debt bondage, and serfdom, are scattered across the globe. And the overwhelming majority of modern slaves - 75 percent - are women. According to the United Nations, 246 million children also live as slaves or in serfdom through unrestricted child labor, which the United Nations terms "virtual slavery." The majority of these children are girls whose parents have sold them into slavery or indentured servitude.

Brownworth's article goes on to cite cases of backbreaking child labor in quarries in India, chained textile laborers in Pakistan, Kenyan coffee workers poisoned by pesticides, and "virtual slaves" in agriculture in the United States. She also points out that the United States has refused to sign UN charters against the slavery of women and children, and has granted MFN status to countries that employ child labor.

One important anti-slavery organization is iAbolish. Go to the link to find out how you can provide humanitarian support to survivors of slavery and help raise international awareness (thanks, Andrej Mucic, for your Tour de Freedom event), and don't miss the chance to send our Secretary of State an e-mail urging her to do the right thing, and to "place the security of the Sudanese people at the top of your agenda, especially in this time of confusion and renewed violence in Sudan."

But wait! There's more. The Bush Administration has courageously invested some $400 billion, the lives of our fighting men and women, and a great deal of political capital in the liberation of Iraq from Saddam's Ba'athist regime. There's still much more to be done, though, and it's up to you and me to help. So here's my plug for Women for Women International, which was founded by an Iraqi woman named Zainab Salbi. There's information about what you can do to help Iraqi women. But it's not just about Iraq - Women for Women has programs in Afghanistan, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Colombia, DR Congo, Kosovo, Nigeria, and Rwanda.

Finally, one more antislavery organization is Free the Slaves, which works in partnership with Anti-Slavery International to pressure governments on the problem of slavery.

I know there's going to be somebody out there whining that "I can't support this or that organization because they're endorsed by right/left -wing nutjobs, and I'm a left/right -wing nutjob." Get over it. This is everybody's problem. Now go do something.

Bambi Sheleg on Disengagement

Who disengaged first? A recent editorial by Bambi Sheleg - which was forwarded to me via e-mail - calls for some soul-searching on the part of the religious Zionist movement. I will quote a few excerpts:

... In the years following the Yom Kippur War we [religious Zionists] came to believe, with true sincerity, that we were the flag-bearers of the Jewish people. After all, we had not forgotten the Torah of Israel and its values; we knew from whence we came and where we were going; we had more humility, we were imbued with faith.

The Yom Kippur War had not badly shaken our world of beliefs, as it did with the leading strata of Israeli society up until then. Just the opposite. That war actually strengthened us. The more mature among us discerned a leadership and ideological vacuum, the need for a new ideal to "uplift the people's spirit" – then at an ebb in wake of the war's tragedy – and charged toward the new and exciting goal: settling Judea, Samaria [i.e., the West Bank] and Gaza. Thus the great internal disengagement of religious Zionism began.

...

All this was done consciously by the leadership out of an internal sense that "our people" were worthy of replacing the old and corrupt elites in power, who lacked the true values, the values that we held.

The combination of an internal sense of power, of knowing the way, and the hatred we felt from the old elites who fought against our dream of settling the entire land caused many of us to stop dealing with the weighty questions on our doorstep. For example: What would we do with three and a half million Palestinians lacking civil rights?

Very few among us related to this weighty question with the proper seriousness. This, perhaps, is the main reason that the helm of power has still not come close to being in religious-Zionist hands.

On the other hand, the seclusion, combined with a deep internal sense of being in the right without asking for or needing external confirmation, caused a deep blindness in many of us.

...
Embarrassing as it is to admit, we fell in love with ourselves. We have strong communities, good schools and devoted teachers. We have a path, we have a destiny. We know how things should progress, and if events don't move the way we think they should, we will volunteer to show reality the way.

DEAR FRIENDS, this is so difficult for me to write: We were wrong, and we misled our society. On the way to redeeming the land of our forefathers, we forgot our people. We looked out for ourselves and our children very well, and we forgot so many children of other people.

We tried to give new life to the Torah of Israel so it would suit the tasks of this generation, but the generation of rabbis that were born to us disappointed. Our Torah is not relevant to the real situation of the great majority of the Jewish people in this generation. Its language is cut off and its thoughts not directed to the simple and basic and existential troubles of our society.

...
We looked out for ourselves, did we not? The beautiful settlements we built, the huge and ostentatious houses in so many of them, we thought this was something we deserved by right. While our schools flourished – and we made sure our children received more and more hours of schooling – there was no one to look out for the other children.

We strengthened our own small and prestigious state religious schools and national haredi [Orthodox] schools and neglected, even when we held the Education Ministry portfolio, all the other school systems. We acted like any self-interested sector, not as a worthy leadership.

We have no interest in the rights of workers, which are gradually being eroded – not of Jewish workers and certainly not of foreign workers; we have nothing to say about Israel being a world leader in the trading of women, and we of course have nothing to say about the Palestinian issue.

Except for a very few in our society, we don't even notice their existence. The Palestinians are invisible. They are a phenomenon of nature. We only see them when they strike at us.

And to all this it must be added that the institution closest to us, the one our people still control, the rabbinical courts, function like the legal system of a third world country, and we do almost nothing to change this disgrace.

The behavior of so many of us in the last few months shows that we have lost our wits. The hysterical demonstrations, the tacit consent to sending children to block roads and clash with security forces, all this attests to a deep sense of insult – as if society had betrayed us, the best of its sons.

And yes, many of us are indeed the best of its sons; but we betrayed society first. Innocently. Out of genuine idealism. But also out of arrogance. We disengaged first.

I simply can't overstate how important I think Bambi Sheleg's article is - not just for religious Zionists, or for Jews, but for all of us. Not everyone is familiar with the various factional and ideological struggles within Jewish and Israeli society; but many of us have dreamed, in some fashion, of "creating a better world." This dream has its dangers.

"...we fell in love with ourselves. We have strong communities, good schools and devoted teachers. We have a path, we have a destiny. We know how things should progress, and if events don't move the way we think they should, we will volunteer to show reality the way."

For those of us who have been on the political and cultural Left in America for the last 30 years, this article is like looking into a mirror. THIS IS US.

Please read the full article at the link
.

Update: Imshin has translated portions of the article, with her comments. Also follow her link to the Hebrew original in Ma'ariv.

Update II: Welcome Imshin readers!

Update III: And Kesher Talk readers! Thanks, Judith.

Update IV: Welcome Michael Totten readers! Michael's post speaks for me: "The country has - correctly, in my opinion - quietly moved to the left on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That's because the intifada is no longer what it recently was. It has been beaten back, and history is moving on without some people."

A reader in Germany was skeptical of the analogy I drew between the religious Zionists and the American left, so I'll try to explain a little better - because I believe this is essential for our understanding of the political realities of today's world.

Like the religious Zionist movement, the American Left was the only segment of society that was strenghtened, not weakened, by the last war - in our case, Vietnam. Over the next three decades, the liberal movement - that is, the increasingly dogmatic ideology that called itself "liberalism" - consolidated its hold on our media, our educational and cultural institutions. Liberal communities like Berkeley and neighborhoods like, well, the one I live in, ensured that left-leaning Americans could live comfortably without having to rub elbows with "red-staters".

Liberal Americans, guided by a "deep internal sense of being in the right without asking for or needing external confirmation,", built and strengthened their own communities but rarely stopped to ask themselves what they might learn from their conservative neighbors, or how they might address the conservatives' legitimate concerns about social values and national security. Now that "the helm of power" is slipping farther and farther away from liberal-Democratic hands, many of them are losing their minds.

The settlers sought to compel the Israeli government to follow the religious-Zionist ideology in its foreign policy, by holding themselves and their children hostage in land that was not part of the State of Israel. In the end, they lost their bet; and rather than concede defeat gracefully, they forced the Israeli Defense Forces to expend valuable resources in forcibly repatriating them to Israel proper. They had to be dragged, literally, kicking and screaming.

American leftists, too, refused to accept political defeat. But then, the political process was never really the point for them, either. As Michael wrote at Tech Central Station, "they march for themselves". "They were their own audience. Everyone else was a prop. Everyone else's eyes were mere mirrors. If they had any practical effect on the ground it was the alienation of their moderate allies." Go read Michael's piece at TCS, and go back and read Bambi Sheleg again.

The extreme right-wing Israeli settlers and the extreme left-wing American liberals may not have much in common politically, but they share the same pathology. As a lifelong liberal, and also a person with personal ties to the Orthodox world, I have great respect for both communities. We must learn the difficult lessons that these difficult times come to teach us.

What A Pr*ck

This is repulsive:

CRAWFORD, Texas - A pickup truck ran over wooden crosses erected at antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan's campsite on Monday night in the latest sign of tension over the peace vigil outside vacationing President Bush's Texas ranch.

Larry Northern, 46, of nearby Waco, Texas, was arrested and charged with criminal mischief in connection with the incident, Crawford Police Chief Donnie Tidmore said.
...

Read it all at the link. Evidently this jackass didn't get the memo: In a civilized society, there are civilized ways to express your opinion. This isn't one of them. What a sick POS.

Worth Reading

A few posts from around the blogosphere:

Alas, a Blog takes a look at feminists for life. I don't often post on abortion, but this is well worth reading. Follow the links to the article at The Nation and the FFL homepage.

For no particular reason, I've failed to link Jack Bog's Blog. For every reason in the world, I'm linking it now. Go pay Bojack a visit.

Just when you thought you'd heard it all, Kesher Talk posts on a breathtakingly ludicrous comparison. And follow her link to the latest from Hitch.

Also in the outrageous comparisons department, PETA are getting lots of mileage out of that permission slip, says Baldilocks.

And speaking of grieving parents, Neo-Neocon wants you to know about Kathe Kollwitz.

Sherri has a heartwarming post on the hardest job in the world.

Update

Due to various activities and obligations both blogospheric and personal, I will be taking a posting break through the end of the month. Light posting, or none, at Dreams Into Lightning until September.

I'm looking forward to a visit from The Next Generation who is rapidly approaching his tenth birthday and will be visiting next week from San Francisco.

Also I'm going to be updating some of my side projects, including Morning Report Archives (no link 'cuz it's not finished yet) and several other entities in the Dreams Into Lightning universe.

Morning Report: August 15, 2005

"All frozen." Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of a tragic airplane crash near Athens, Greece that killed all 121 people aboard - including many children - on Sunday. The plane apparently suffered a loss of air pressure, and many of the bodies were frozen. CNN reports: 'All but two of the bodies have been recovered, a Greek government spokesman said Monday, and officials hope autopsies and cockpit recorders will hold clues to Sunday's crash of Helios Airways Flight 522. The autopsies were ordered to determine if the 115 passengers and six crew were already dead or oxygen-starved before the crash, the spokesman said. ... Akrivos Tsolakis, head of the Greek airline safety committee, said the plane's data and voice recorders were being sent to French air safety investigators for further examination, but that the voice recorder was badly damaged. "It's in a bad state and, possibly, it won't give us the information we need," The Associated Press quoted him as saying. "Both boxes will be sent to Paris where a French committee will help us and the foreign experts that are here to decode (it)." ... The Boeing 737, en route from Larnaca, Cyprus to Athens, crashed north of the Greek capital shortly after 12 p.m. (5 a.m. ET). The plane had been scheduled to continue from Athens to Prague, Czech Republic. A Cyprus government spokesman said all the passengers were Cypriots.' Debka says: 'Helios Airways grounds all its planes. Two flight recorders sent to Paris for analysis. Athens defense ministry source says bodies recovered from Cypriot airline crash were frozen solid. Investigators seek clues to cause of Helios Boeing 737 crash north of Athens killing all 121 people aboard, 49 of them children bound from Larnaca to Prague. One pilot and the passenger were reported unconscious, the second pilot absent, by the Greek air force F-16 jets sent up when the plane failed to respond to signals from Athens control tower. The two flight recorders have been recovered. They may answer some puzzling questions which explain why a terrorist hijacking was not ruled out by the Greek army chief and which sent Mediterranean airports on hijack alert. Early indications that sudden decompression caused the crash do not disclose how this breakdown occurred on an aircraft less than two years old. Where was the missing pilot, an experienced British flyer, minutes before touchdown at Athens? Why did he fail to signal Athens about a decompression problem? The fragmentation of the plane into small bits of widely scattered debris suggests a possible explosion. ...' (CNN, Debka)

Israeli army evicts Gaza settlers. In a dramatic and historic confrontation, the Israeli army began the sometimes forcible evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, under the provisions of the Bush/Sharon disengagement plan. The conflict between the "orange" (pro-settler) and "blue" (pro-government) factions is singular in Israel's modern history. The deadline for the settlers to leave the area coincided with the Jewish fast day of Tisha b'Av, a solemn commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in the year 70 CE. The settlers' motivations are both political and religious: like many right-of-center Israelis, they see Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories as tactically disastrous for the Jewish state; many also envision an Israel whose borders more closely match the boundaries of the ancient Jewish homeland ("Eretz Israel") than do the current 1948/1967 borders. The Jerusalem Post: 'IDF [Israel Defence Forces] Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz declared Monday that since the Disengagement Implementation Law went into effect at midnight Sunday, everything was going as expected. By 2:00 p.m. soldiers finished distributing eviction notices in Dugit, Nisanit and Pe'at Sadeh. In the Gaza settlements of Atzmona, Katif and Netzer Hazani, the army reached an agreement with the settlers by which notices were given to the settlements' secretariat to distribute. At 3:30, Morag and Gan Or had also received the decrees. Police said that by the end of the day Monday, they expected the northern Gaza settlements of Elei Sinai, Nisanit and Dugit and the southern Gaza settlement of Pe'at Sadeh to have emptied. Altogether, roughly 1,850 live in those four settlements. In those settlements, soldiers will spend the afternoon aiding the families in doing their final packing and transporting their belongings to their new homes and destinations. ...' Arutz Sheva: 'A woman in Morag threatens to employ violence against herself and her children -and Noga Cohen of Kfar Darom, three of whose children lost their legs in a terrorist attack, attempted to mollify her. The woman, named Ofrah, a 17-year veteran of Morag in southern Gush Katif, screamed at an army officer who arrived to deliver the expulsion notices: "By what right do you come and throw me out of my house? Did I hurt anyone? Did I do something? You're coming in the name of the law, in the name of the government - I'd like to see Ariel Sharon come here himself! He came here once and shook my hand and encouraged me to keep living here; I even have one child named Ariel and one named Sharon... In a chilling ending to the exchange, in which the army officer was barely able to respond, the woman then said, "I never hurt anyone, but I want to stay in my home. If I have to shoot myself and my children, I will." She then turned around and walked to the house.' Also from Arutz Sheva: 'Tense and charged stand-offs between soldiers/police and residents outside Chomesh, in the Shomron, as well as outside Gan-Or, Gadid, and Ganei Tal. Just south of N'vei Dekalim, the main Gush Katif road leads to a turnoff to the twin communities of Gan-Or and Gadid. At 7 AM this morning, the residents blocked the main gate leading to the two, and held a large prayer service. At around 9 AM, the local brigade commander, Col. Hagi Yehezkel, arrived. One eyewitness said, "Behind him was a long line of black-uniformed forces, which could not help but leave very unpleasant associations with Jewish history of several decades ago. The officer kept saying, 'We are coming in peace,' but many of the residents attacked him [verbally] very strongly. ...' Debka: 'Half a dozen Gaza and two West Bank communities bar soldiers handing out individual 48-hour eviction orders Monday amid heated verbal exchanges. Troops are not forcing their way in. No arms on either side. Neve Dekalim blocked 30 container trucks for removing belongings for hours. Israeli cabinet majority approves Stage B of evacuation operation – all of Gush Katif bloc communities - by sixteen ministers to 4 Likud dissenters.' MSNBC (AP story): 'Defiant and tearful Jewish settlers locked their communities’ gates and formed human chains to block troops from delivering eviction notices Monday, as Israel began its historic pullout from the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation. Police and soldiers waited patiently in the sweltering sun and avoided confrontation at the behest of their commanders. One sobbing settler pleaded with a brigadier general not to evict him before the two men embraced. “It’s a painful and difficult day, but it’s a historic day,” said Israel’s defense minister, Shaul Mofaz. ...' NOTE: For an excellent round-up of the disengagement debate, please see Kesher Talk. (various)

Bush on Iran: "All options on table." President Bush has refused to rule out military action on Iran. Via Free Iran: 'US President George W Bush refused to rule out the use of force against Iran over the Islamic republic's resumption of nuclear activities, in an interview with Israeli television. When asked if the use of force was an alternative to faltering diplomatic efforts, Bush said: "All options are on the table." "The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country," he said in a clear reference to Iraq. "I have been willing to do so as a last resort in order to secure the country and provide the opportunity for people to live in free societies," he added. Bush was speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas to a reporter from Israeli public television. The Jewish state has accused Iran of seeking to acquire nuclear weapons and believes it is the prime target of the alleged arms program. ...' Also in the same thread: 'President George W. Bush yesterday raised the possibility of a U.S. military response to Iran's decision to restart its nuclear energy program. ``All options are on the table,'' Bush said in an Israeli television interview from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, according to a transcript provided by his staff today. He said military force would be a last resort. ``We've used force in the recent past to secure our country,'' Bush added, when asked to elaborate. ``It's difficult for the commander-in-chef to put kids in harm's way. Nevertheless, I have been willing to do so as a last resort in order to secure this country and to provide the opportunity for people to live in free societies.'' Iran reopened uranium conversion facilities at its Isfahan plant on Aug. 8, restarting a uranium enrichment program the oil- rich nation claims is needed for energy purposes. Material produced by the process, which Iran hopes to export, can fuel a nuclear power plant or a nuclear bomb. ...' (varous, via Free Iran)