“The purpose of political terrorism for a century and a half has been to provoke repressive countermeasures, so that more and more of “your” people will feel forced to choose you over your enemy.” (Unqualified Offerings)
Category: International Affairs
The Head Heeb
The Head Heeb is the blog of Jonathan Edelstein who is a lawyer in New York. He started blogging only a couple of weeks ago, but already has quite a few interesting posts. For a start, I recommend his posts on the Middle East/Israel/Palestine (1, 2, 3). He calls himself a “militant moderate” on the… Continue reading The Head Heeb
Finally, A Link Between Iraq and Terrorism
Gene Healy wonders whether we have already won against Al-Qaeda: Consider Malvo and Muhammed. Two none-too-bright jokers with a $300 rifle and no formal training repeatedly shut down the Beltway and terrorized Greater Washington for almost a month. If America really is riddled with sleeper cells, why not activate another 20 guys? Ten two-man-shooter teams,… Continue reading Finally, A Link Between Iraq and Terrorism
The Dirty World of Weapons Export
Hans Blix doesn’t want to make the names of weapons suppliers public, according to the NY Times: Mr. Blix, the chairman of the United Nations chemical and biological weapons team, explained that he would, at least initially, remove the suppliers’ names from the document that will be made public because inspectors found in the past… Continue reading The Dirty World of Weapons Export
Some Hope(?) in the Holy Land
According to a November poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and Gaza: The poll shows that a significant shift has occurred in Palestinian public attitudes regarding the intifada and the peace process. It shows a majority of 54% supporting the “road map” and 42% oppose it.… Continue reading Some Hope(?) in the Holy Land
PhotoDude Gets It
PhotoDude has a great blog where he discuss politics and posts his photographs as well. He’s on my blogroll mainly because of the images, but his recent post about clearly differentiating between the extremist murderers of the Al-Qaeda variety and the general Muslim population is very good: And we need to make that disctinction clearly… Continue reading PhotoDude Gets It
Tribalism and Conservatism
Unqualified Offerings talks about how US intervention looks from a foreigner’s perspective: Do not mistake Unqualified Offerings’ point here. UO is not saying Mr. Nawfal is right and we’re terrible people. Unqualified Offerings is saying that what matters is that Mr. Nawfal thinks he’s right and we’re terrible people. The fact that we launched our… Continue reading Tribalism and Conservatism
Global Attitudes Survey
There are some interesting results in this Pew survey. Large majorities (>80%) in US, UK and Germany (surprise!) think Iraq is a danger. A majority of Germans, French, and Russians and 44% of the British think the US wants to use force in Iraq because they want to control Iraqi oil. Is there something we… Continue reading Global Attitudes Survey
Muslims, the West and Media
Aziz Poonawalla has a series (1, 2, 3) of posts on the silence of the media in showing the non-extremist Muslim majority. First, some quotes from Aziz: Let me assure him [Steven Den Beste] and you that as a Muslim, I don’t really CARE how Islam is perceived by non-Muslims. I care how Islam is… Continue reading Muslims, the West and Media
Gujrat Riots
Aziz Poonawalla (yes, him again) has the best collection of links to stories about the Hindu-Muslim riots in the Indian province of Gujrat earlier in the year. Suman Palit responds to Aziz with the “root causes” of the hatred of the Hindu fundamentalists for their local Muslims. I don’t agree with his interpretation though. He… Continue reading Gujrat Riots