Terrorists destroy cricket in Pakistan

Sad:

At least six players in the Sri Lankan national cricket team were hurt when masked gunmen fired on the team bus in Lahore while being driven to the Gaddafi stadium on Tuesday.

Six Pakistani policemen and two civilians were killed when 12 masked gunmen on rickshaws attacked with guns, grenades and rockets.

The team bus came under fire as the players headed to the stadium for the third day of the second Test against Pakistan.

Thilan Samaraweera was one of those hurt along with Tharanga Paranavitana. Both are in hospital. Samaraweera has a bullet wound to his thigh. Paranavitana has a gash to his chest from shrapnel.

Those wounded with minor shrapnel injuries were skipper Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Chaminda Vaas and Ajantha Mendis.

Samaweera scored back-to-back double centuries in this series, 214 yesterday and 231 in the first Test in Karachi last week.

Cricket always seemed immune from such attacks, but this is the first time members of a national team were attacked and injured while touring a foreign country.

Pakistan has increasingly become a problematic place to play cricket. Some international teams (like Australia) have not toured Pakistan since 1998 because of terrorist threats.

But the hidden victim of this attack is Pakistani cricket. After this attack, no international side will feel safe touring the nation for a long time - perhaps more than a decade. This is a terrible state of affairs because Pakistan produces some great players and the team is always competitive. Without international tours, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) will be unable to gain enough cash to keep itself going, not least spreading the wealth at club level for player development.

Pakistan will be able to send its national team to other countries to play, of course, but without a home series, cricket in Pakistan will suffer mightily. This is a sad day for cricket in Pakistan.

Justice

Judgment at Nuremberg:

But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men - even able and extraordinary men - can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs... The murder of children... How *easily* that can happen! There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the "protection" of the country. Of "survival". The answer to that is: *survival as what*? A country isn't a rock. And it isn't an extension of one's self. *It's what it stands for, when standing for something is the most difficult!* Before the people of the world - let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what *we* stand for: *justice, truth... and the value of a single human being!*

I love it when the words of the past - even words uttered by fictional characters - can so utterly convict and expose the present.

This film should have been essential viewing for anyone in US military charged with making tough decisions after 9/11.

Anthrax

From the NYT:

With the F.B.I. preparing to close the case, The New York Times has taken the deepest look so far at the investigation, speaking to dozens of Dr. Ivins’s colleagues and friends, reading hundreds of his e-mail messages, interviewing former bureau investigators and anthrax experts, reviewing court records, and obtaining, for the first time, police reports on his suicide in July, including a lengthy recorded interview with his wife.

That examination found that unless new evidence were to surface, the enormous public investment in the case would appear to have yielded nothing more persuasive than a strong hunch, based on a pattern of damning circumstances, that Dr. Ivins was the perpetrator.

Focused for years on the wrong man, the bureau missed ample clues that Dr. Ivins deserved a closer look. Only after a change of leadership nearly five years after the attacks did the bureau more fully look into Dr. Ivins’s activities. That delay, and his death, may have put a more definitive outcome out of reach.

Brad Garrett, a respected F.B.I. veteran who helped early in the case before his retirement, said logic and evidence point to Dr. Ivins as the most likely perpetrator.

It's that second paragraph that is important. While Ivins seemed the most likely candidate and a series of circumstantial evidence pointed to this, Ivins could've simply been the wrong man in the wrong place: there was nothing that tied the guy directly to the crimes.

It's sad, but when a person is accused of a crime they did not commit, their subsequent behaviour can quite often appear to show a level of guilt. Ivins certainly acted as though he was guilty after he became a suspect... but then so did another suspect, Stephen Hatfill, who was subsequently exonerated for any involvement in the case.

The article shows just how unprofessional the FBI was in the early days of the case and how mistakes were made. I'm no conspiracy theorist (I don't think the Anthrax attacks were some secret attack on the US by its own government) but I do think that there is enough doubt on Ivins as a suspect - there is every possibility that another person did it and was able to cover his/her tracks in the years after the attacks took place (when the FBI was prevaricating).

Was the Anthrax sourced from within the US? I have no doubt whatsoever that this was the case. Was the Anthrax sent by someone working in a US government biological laboratory? I have no doubt. Was that person Dr Bruce Ivins? Maybe - but that's as far as the evidence seems to go.

The inevitable result of Islamophobia

From the department of publishing what people want to hear:

The Sun newspaper has come over a bit modest. Following a Channel 4 documentary about media reporting of Muslims, the paper accepts some of its stories were "distorted". But they're not doing themselves justice. They weren't distorted – they were entirely made up. For example, a story about a Muslim bus driver who ordered his passengers off the bus so he could pray was pure fabrication.

But if reporters are allowed to make up what they like, that one should be disciplined for displaying a shocking lack of imagination. He could have continued, "The driver has now won a case at the Court of Human Rights that his bus route should be altered so it only goes east. This means the 37A from Sutton Coldfield will no longer stop at Selly Oak library, but go the wrong way up a one-way street and carry on to Mecca. Local depot manager Stan Tubworth said, 'I suggested he only take it as far as Athens but he threatened a Jihad, and a holy war is just the sort of thing that could put a service like the Selly Oak Clipper out of business'."

Then there was a story about "Muslim thugs" in Windsor who attacked a house used by soldiers, except it was another invention. But with this tale the reporter still claims it's true, despite a complete absence of evidence, because, "The police are too politically correct to admit it." This must be the solution to all unsolved crimes. With Jack the Ripper it's obvious – he was facing the East End of London, his victims were infidels and he'd have access to a burqua which would give him vital camouflage in the smog. But do the pro-Muslim police even bother to investigate? Of course not, because it's just "Allah Allah Allah" down at the stations these days.

I have no politically correct notions that demand that I ignore racially motivated violence. I know that minority racial groups can often give rise to racially motivated violence - like Lebanese men in Sydney gang-raping white women.

What I can't tolerate is when the media, in order to capitalise on this fear, creates stories out of thin air in the same way in order to gain financial rewards (more newspapers sold, more advertising space sold). In this sense, the market rewards the media for distorting facts rather than reporting facts.

Much of our current debate about terrorism since 9/11 has been based upon fear and ignorance. While Islamic terrorism is certainly on the rise it has yet to impact us (since 9/11) in the West any worse than, say, the IRA bombing campaigns in Britain or radical leftist groups like the Red Army Faction.

And this means, of course, that 9/11 in the light of history is now appearing to be an exceptionally unusual event rather than the beginning of a new pattern of terrorism.

AAAAAAAAA

A blog post with every single category marked (I'm doing this for scribefire)

America - where evil deeds protect good people?

The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.

Unless, of course, the good man resorts to evil deeds in response to evil:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In the past 12 months my stance against the Bush administration has not so much softened as it has not been discussed. Most of my anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War statements at this blog occurred in 2005 and 2006. Since the middle of 2007, I have focused mainly upon economic issues, probably because it was a developing area (and still is) and is more interesting.

But this recent revelation - quoted above - reminds me of the anger I still hold against the Bush administration for destroying America's reputation around the world. The fact is that the Bush administration - and Bush himself - approved the use of torture of terrorist suspects. Abu Ghraib was not some anomoly, it was the natural result of things. Stories we have heard of torture at other places, like Bagram, Guantanamo Bay and the roving CIA torture cells that walk into other countries and violate their sovereign laws by kidnapping people and taking them to places where they can be tortured for information - they are true. These stories have moved from rumours to substantiated rumours and have now gone onto documentable fact signed and sealed by those at the top of the US Administration.

Add to this the flimsy basis upon which the Iraq war was founded upon - with the deaths of over 4000 US Servicemen and probably over one million Iraqis since 2003 - and the situation seems very clear.

I'm exceptionally annoyed that impeachment of Bush and Cheney was never seriously considered. It speaks volumes of America's seriously skewed priorities that one President's lies to protect adultery was grounds for the first and only impeachment trial of the 20th century while the invasion and conquest of another nation (which was unconstitutional in the first place) that results in the deaths of over one million people, the economic and social ruin of tens of millions of others did not so much as get looked at in Congress.

Bush, Cheney and his gang may not escape impeachment, but it is in the interests of American and the entire world for these people to be tried as war criminals, with immunity granted to those in the lower echelons so that they may testify about what they saw and heard - these lower echelons being those who actually created the procedures and participated in them.

But, then again, I wouldn't hold any hopes high for such a process to happen. If only Bush, post-president, were kidnapped and extraordinarily rendered to Europe to face the International Criminal Court - that would be justice.

In order for evil to triumph, it is not just necessary for good people to do nothing... it is also for evil people to get into positions of power and abuse them in the name of good.

And to think that Bush - and Ashcroft - publicly declare faith in Christ. Abomination.

PS - Thanks to Tom Hinkle for setting me off on this.

Iraq war breeding secularism amongst young Muslims

From the department of I-honestly-didn't-see-this-coming:

After almost five years of war, many young Iraqis, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

"I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us," said Sara Sami, a high school student in Basra. "Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don't deserve to be rulers."

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: "The religion men are liars. Young people don't believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore."

The shift in Iraq runs counter to trends of rising religiousness among young people across much of the Middle East, where religion has replaced nationalism as a unifying ideology. While religious extremists are admired by a number of young people in other parts of the Arab world, Iraq offers a test case of what could happen when extremist theories are applied.

Well this goes counter to what alarmists have been saying about the spread of Islam.

Most suicide bombers not motivated by religion

What more than 95 per cent of all suicide terrorist attacks around the world have in common is not religion, but a specific political goal to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland or prize greatly. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, the central objective of every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has been to compel a democratic state with military forces on territory that the terrorists prize to take those forces out.

Interesting.

The Secret Speech

Since I'm into all things Russian today, I have been reading up on Nikita Khrushchev's "secret speech" that he gave in 1956. This speech was instrumental in changing the Soviet Union after Stalin's death, mainly because it was a fair and honest assessment of the massive damage that Stalin did not just to Russians, but to Communist Ideology.

It was a very brave move on Khrushchev's part, and it amazes me even today to think that the guy ended up being the Soviet Union's no. 1 man.

What I find interesting is this quote from the speech:

Stalin originated the concept 'enemy of the people.' This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven. It made possible the use of the cruelest repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent… On the whole, the only proof of guilt actually used, against all norms of current legal science, was the 'confession' of the accused himself. As subsequent probing has proven, 'confessions' were acquired through physical pressures against the accused. This led to glaring violations of revolutionary legality and to the fact that many entirely innocent individuals… became victims."

Given the current debate about "waterboarding" in the US, it seems striking to consider that 50 years ago, the Soviet Union realised that torture simply did not work.

Fox News is Propaganda

From the department of lies-will-set-you-free:

For the second straight day, Fox News stood virtually alone in advancing thinly supported speculation to raise fears that the wildfires ravaging California are not the result of a confluence of arid heat and high winds but were set deliberately by al Qaeda terrorists bent on destroying America.

Fox & Friends, the conservative cable channel, was panned Wednesday for breathlessly reporting a sketchy, four-year-old FBI memo as if it offered new information linking America's enemies in the "Global War on Terror" with a plot to burn down southern California.

The morning team was back at it Thursday, as anchor Alisyn Camerota introduced a segment on the fires that again mischaracterized and over-inflated warnings from a 2003 interview with an al Qaeda detainee.

I'm sick of this whole "war on terror" and the communists fictional "islamofascists" who threaten world peace by spreading communism a caliphate around the world.

Organisations like Fox reinforce the lie that Al Qaeda and Osama have almost mythical powers to attack and damage America freely. The reality is that they don't even control a single nation, let alone have amazing power to hurt America.

It's obvious now, six years later, that 9/11 was a complete fluke, a mixture of good planning and good luck by Osama and sleepy incompetence by America. Since then the US has not had a single terrorist attack within its border. Why? Because Osama and Al Qaeda cannot rely upon good luck and American incompetence any more.

There have been, of course, terrorist attacks elsewhere - Bali, Barcelona, London - but when you look at the history of terrorism since 1970 there has been nothing "special" going on. The IRA killed more people in Britain than unhappy Muslims ever did, and ETA killed more people in Spain over the years than the Islamic terrorists in Barcelona.

Fox, and other unworthy media channels, are promoting fear. Fear, of course, sells. If it wasn't for fear, people wouldn't have stopped immunising their kids and some kids would still be alive today. Irrational fear, based not upon factual information but upon impressions and falsehoods, is what leads to many wrongheaded actions. The Iraq war, for example, was waged because Americans feared that Iraq would give chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to terrorists who would then use them against America. Fear led America to invade Iraq, even though there was no real evidence WMDs existed, which is what has subsequently been found out.

The fact that fear sells is one of the problems with modern media. Since media is owned by profit-making corporations, the reporting of objective, truthful news is hardly going to be a priority. Fear is profit for the media.

This is yet another example of market failure. Steps need to be taken to punish news organisations for peddling lies and half-truths, and rewards need to be given to such organisations for objective, dispassionate and accurate reporting. The marketplace is not going to do this, so the government must step in.

9/11 survivor hoax

From the department of crisis=opportunity:

As a matter of history, Ms. Head’s account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. As a matter of emotion, her story deeply moved audiences like college students to whom she spoke and visitors at ground zero, where she has long led tours for the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center for visitors including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki.

“What I witnessed there I will never forget,” she told a gathering at Baruch College at a memorial event in 2006. “It was a lot of death and destruction, but I also saw hope.”

Much of Ms. Head’s account was posted on the Web site of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, a nonprofit organization for which she served as president and as point person for corporate donations.

But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

The family and friends of the man to whom she claimed to be engaged say they have never heard of Tania Head and view the relationship she describes with the man, who truly died in the north tower, as an impossibility.

A spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch & Company, where she told people she worked at the time of the terror attack, said the company had no record of employing a Tania Head.

And few people, it seems, who embraced the gripping immediacy and pain of her account ever asked the name of the man whose ring she had returned, or that of the hospital where she was treated, or the identities of the people she met with in the south tower on the morning of 9/11.

Terrorism vs Global Warming

From the department of I-never-knew-there-was-a-choice:

Prime Minister John Howard says terrorism is a more immediate security threat than climate change, but both are major issues facing Australia.

Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has rejected Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty's view that global warming is the greatest challenge to Australia's national security, instead naming terrorism as the key threat.

Mr Howard told Southern Cross Radio he does not automatically agree with Mr Keelty's assessment of the scale of threat posed by climate change.

"They're both big issues," he said.

"I think terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism are far more immediate threats to Australia than the mass movement of people in China as a result of water storage and water shortage.

"But both of them are important, and I don't think that it's a question of an either or.

"They're both big challenges and they're both things that we should worry about."

I find this line of argument from Howard and the coalition quite offensive.

First of all, there is no "choice" between engaging one and not the other. Both threats need to be handled correctly.

Secondly, the Howard government's concern for terrorist attacks led us into an illegal and immoral invasion of a sovereign nation which has made the world even more threatened by terrorism.

Thirdly, the Howard government has only just recently decided that climate change is actually happening, having moved from scepticism to acceptance faster than you can say "election soon".

What this tells me is quite clear - the Howard government has been reactive, rather than proactive, on both issues, and have failed to address either of them constructively.

Iran and terrorism

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, has decided that he will not "insist" on a visit to the WTC site. Yet, as a comment on a NY Times blog site says, "Why does anyone - even a visiting president of any nation, one we like or don't like - need permission to go to a public place?"

It is a measure of the success of terrorism and of the right-wing noise machine that has meant that most Americans now see Iran as a grave threat to them and to world peace.

I'm not arguing that Iran is somehow the paragon of all virtue and peace and love - of course they're not. Yet Iran is nowhere near as dangerous or as threatening as some people - read George W. Bush - make them out to be.

Consider the following facts:

• Iran has never invaded any other nations. Admittedly Iran tried to take over Iraq back during the Iran-Iraq war but that was in repsonse to Iraq invading them first. In all other respects Iran has been peaceful, both after the 1979 revolution and in the decades before it. Unlike Saddam and Iraq, they have no history of aggression towards their neighbours.

• Iran's beef with America goes back over 50 years. In 1953 the CIA engineered a coup that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian government and replaced it with a corrupt dictatorship. In 1979 Iranian nationalists and fundamentalists were responsible for the Shah's overthrow in their own revolution. Since the CIA used the US embassy in Tehran as a staging and co-ordination point during the 1953 coup, the new Fundamentalist government in 1979 took over the embassy. The resulting hostage crisis was regrettable, but, in the context of 1953, understandable. Iran wanted to prevent any US influence in their new nation.

• Ali Khameni, Iran's Supreme leader (pictured), is the official head of the armed forces. Any stupid or inflammatory comments that president Ahmadinejad made about destroying Israel need to be understood in that context. Ahmadinejad, for all his fiery rhetoric, has no power at all to use the Iranian military against another nation. Moreover, Ali Khameni publicly denounced the 9/11 attacks soon after they occurred, saying "Mass killings of human beings are catastrophic acts which are condemned... wherever they may happen and whoever the perpetrators and the victims may be". Sympathy towards America by ordinary Iranians resulted in candlelit vigils in memory of those who died on 9/11.

• Ahmadinejad succeeded Mohammad Khatami, who was Iranian president during the 9/11 attacks. In response to the terrorist attacks, Khatami said "On behalf of the Iranian government and the nation, I condemn the hijacking attempts and terrorist attacks on public centers in American cities which have killed a large number of innocent people. My deep sympathy goes out to the American nation, particularly those who have suffered from the attacks and also the families of the victims. Terrorism is doomed and the international community should stem it and take effective measures in a bid to eradicate it."

• There are about 25,000 Jews who live in Iran. Iran's first and most revered Supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa soon after the 1979 revolution which decreed that Iranian Jews should be protected (along with another minority religions, including Christians).

• Iran also has a large and influential reformist movement that has reacted against fundamentalism and likes women's heads uncovered and their rock music loud and heavy. Within this Islamic fundamentalist state there is a growing and important force of secularism that wants nothing but peace.

• Lastly, Iran is dominated by Shi'a Islam. While a minority in international Islam, Shi'ites are the majority in Iran. To fundamentalists who adhere to Sunni Islam, Shi'ites are essentially heretics. It makes no sense that Sunnis like Osama Bin Laden and Sunni terrorist groups like Al Qaeda would wish to support the Iranian government.

What to conclude therefore? As I said, Iran is not all peacefulness and light. No doubt there are some within the government or within the population who wish to bring terror to the world. Yet the evidence of history shows that Iran is much less threatening to the world - and to America - than what many might think. They have a history of non-aggression; various top politicians have publicly denounced terrorism; they offer deep sympathy to America in response to 9/11; they have acted peacefully towards religious minorities in their own midst, most notably Jews; they have a growing reformist movement that wishes dialogue and peace with America and other western nations.

I say Ahmadinejad should lay the wreath. It is to America's shame that they would not accord to him the courtesy of other world leaders.

© 2007 Neil McKenzie Cameron, http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/

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Bin Laden tape a fake

It was probably cut and spliced by some unskilled hacks who work for Al Qaeda:

On the Friday before the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Osama bin Laden appeared in a new video, his first since prior to the U.S. presidential elections in 2004. In analyzing the video, Neal Krawetz of Hactor Factor, an expert on digital image forensics, said in his latest blogs that the video contained many visual and audio splices, and that all of the modifications were of very low quality.

Most striking is bin Laden's beard, which has been gray in recent images. For this video it is black. "As far as my tools can detect, there has been no image manipulation of the bin Laden portion of the image beyond contrast adjustment. His beard really does appear to be that color."

...

Krawetz says the inner frame of bin Laden was resaved at least twice, and not at the same time. The images show fine horizontal stripes on bin Laden and a background indicating these came from interlaced video sources. In contrast, the text elements, such as the As-Sahab logo, appear to be from non-interlaced sources.

Tim Blair continues to be an idiot

I just read this piece of tripe from Tim Blair:

The day after 9/11 a friend went to dinner with some Australian publishing types. He still works with these muppets, so I won’t identify him, but I will record his description of their mood that night.

They were happy. Not dance-about-the-room Hamas happy, but satisfied happy. America had been taught a lesson. These folk would imagine themselves to be educated, sensitive, intellectual, creative ... yet their response to the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people by fascist maniacs was to voice a smug contentment; at last, the US got what was coming to it.

Contrast their post-9/11 views to those of Formula One drivers preparing to compete in the 2001 Italian Grand Prix, as reported by Matt Bishop in the May 2007 edition of F1 Racing (no link available):

It’s barely 100 hours since we all watched what would be known simply as ‘9/11’ play out, live, on our TV screens. Like you, like me, like everyone, F1’s biggest stars are still shell-shocked ...

They’re shrugging, grimacing, and muttering words like “bastards” or “bâtards” or “bastardos” or “bastardi” or, in Kimi Raikkonen’s case, and I overhear him utter the word in exactly the context I’m describing, to a Finnish journalist, “äpärä”.

These guys drive cars for a living. Most have no university education. Which might explain why they’re so morally advanced compared to Australian bookniks.

So, what do we learn from Blair here?

1. Since Blair is a member of New Limited, the "Pubilshing types" he speaks of are essentially non-Murdoch. Thus non-Murdoch media hate America and like it when people die.
2. That intellectuals like people dying.
3. It's okay to make broad insults against people you don't like without providing any evidence whatsoever.

What can I say except that it is typical of this guy's lack of intellect that he would come up with such tripe. If this is the guy who edits the Letters to the Daily Telegraph - a publication that seeks to dumb down ordinary Australians - then there is no wonder that people are so confused about important issues like the Iraq War and Global Warming.

To me, Blair has no credibility. Moreover, those who admire him lose credibility of their own.

Islam vs Secularism - who will win?

From the department of going against the grain:

A group of young Muslim apostates launches a campaign today, the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, to make it easier to renounce Islam.

The provocative move reflects a growing rift between traditionalists and a younger generation raised on a diet of Dutch tolerance.

The Committee for Ex-Muslims promises to campaign for freedom of religion but has already upset the Islamic and political Establishments for stirring tensions among the million-strong Muslim community in the Netherlands.

Ehsan Jami, the committee’s founder, who rejected Islam after the attack on the twin towers in 2001, has become the most talked-about public figure in the Netherlands. He has been forced into hiding after a series of death threats and a recent attack.

Word Trade Center collapse - a controlled demolition?

From the department of letting-the-experts-speak:

An analysis of the World Trade Center collapse has challenged a conspiracy theory surrounding the 9/11 attacks.

The study by a Cambridge University, UK, engineer demonstrates that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total.

One of many conspiracy theories proposes that the buildings came down in a manner consistent with a "controlled demolition".

The new data shows this is not needed to explain the way the towers fell.

Over 2,800 people were killed in the devastating attacks on New York.

After reviewing television footage of the Trade Center's destruction, engineers had proposed the idea of "progressive collapse" to explain the way the twin towers disintegrated on 11 September 2001.

When Suffering gets personal

John Simpson, a BBC reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan, has seen much suffering over the past few years - including the effects of suicide bombings. Finally it has begun to affect him personally:

I do not just loathe the stench of high explosive, I have come to loathe the attitudes of people who use high explosive for their own purposes: insurgents, terrorists, the intelligence services of a dozen countries, governments which target towns and cities and always have a ready apology when they kill the wrong people.

High explosive means hospitals with blood on the walls and corridors, and ordinary people like you and me, lying on the floor or on a gurney, ears ringing with the noise of the explosion, nostrils filled with the stench of it still.

The screams of others who are worse hurt than us. The fear and despair of the small number of doctors who have to deal with so many life-or-death cases, and know that they are condemning many of them to a slow, painful death.

"The armed struggle," said an African resistance song from the 1980s, "is an act of love." Try explaining that to the people lying in the hospital corridors.

A good response to persecution?

From the Washington Post:

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- A dozen Christian men were convicted Thursday and sentenced to up to 14 years in jail for beating to death and beheading two Muslims to avenge the government executions of three Christians in Indonesia last year.

Five other Christians received eight-year terms for burying the pair, who were set upon by a mob as they drove though a Christian neighborhood on Sulawesi island a day after the Sept. 22, 2006, executions of Fabianus Tibo and two other Christian militants.

The three executed Christians had been found guilty of leading a militia that killed at least 70 Muslims during a 1999-2002 religious war on the island that led to the deaths of at least 1,000 people from both faiths.

Al Qaeda Supports the emerging church

Quite a few bloggers have pointed this one out. It's quite disgraceful. Here's a sample:

If the world is to be saved from Muslim conquest, it will be America who does it. And if America is to be saved, only conservatism can do it. And if conservatism is to be saved, it will be those Bible-believing patriots who do it–those conservative, evangelical Christians who are the bedrock of the American way of life.

Update:
Tom Ascol comments about this at his blog and some of the comments there are worth reading. From what I can see there is a unity amongst non-emerging types against this article. In other words, yes we disagree with the emerging church but no they are not terrorists.

I suppose it shows just how poor the situation has become in the US that people are so willing to call someone a deadly enemy based upon theological disagreements like this.