Apartheid genindført i Afrika

I nord-nigeria har de netop indført aparheid (statslig sanktioneret adskillelse). Mellem muslimske mænd og kvinder, men når tvang er involveret, hvad er forskellen så reelt?

The authorities in the northern Nigerian state of Kano have imposed a ban on Muslim men and women travelling together on public transport.

They say the ban is in accordance with Sharia law.

Men and women-only buses and motorcycle taxis were paraded in a mass rally at a stadium in the city of Kano.

Kano is one of several Muslim majority states that adopted Sharia law in 2000, a move which led to inter-religious riots that left thousands dead.

Under the ban, commercial motorcylists seen carrying women could be fined.

Vi får se om ikke det snart bliver udbredt til ikke-muslimer også.

Henrik

Selvmordsbombning = virus

Douglas Rushkoff har en interessant vinkel på spredningen af selvmordsbombninger:

What we're witnessing is viral contagion - the beginnings of what some hope will spawn an epidemic of suicide attacks. These would not be conducted by "foreigners" crossing borders with plastic explosives kits, but locals, spontaneously acting in concert with others around the globe. It's a scary thought to those who only understand simple cause and effect, but this isn't magic or supernatural at all.

As numerous studies have shown, airplane accidents tend to be clustered - one pilot error leads to a catastrophe that becomes big news. Shortly later, one or more other "human error" airplane crashes occur. On college campuses, student suicides rarely happen in isolation. News of one suicide leads to another. When a famous person or large group commits suicide, many copycat events occur shortly later - beyond the statistical norm.

It's not that one event causes the other; rather, suicidal people are waiting for a cue, or a pilot who is already careless or flying under the influence of alcohol finally ends up crossing the barrier that, subconsciously, he had been dangerously testing all along.

It is the mediaspace that allows for these clusters of sympathetic repetitions. Were a murder or suicide not covered in the paper, there would be no copycat events.

Umiddelbart en interessant vinkel. Han tilskriver senere selvmordsbombernes motivation at være vrede over uretfærdigheder. Han glemmer at sætte spørgsmålstegn ved om disse er retfærdiggjordte, men det ændrer jo ikke ved at ideen er interessant.

Henrik

Skyd for at dræbe

Der har været en del ballade i medierne efter det britiske politi skød en mørklødet mand, der valgte at ignorere direkte ordrer fra politiet om at stoppe, og istedet spurtede ind i en undergrundsstation og hen mod den nærmeste større koncentration af civile. Bagefter viste han sig at være brazilianer, og ikke en selvmordsbomber, som politiet troede.

Balladen i medierne har hovedsageligt været om det britiske politis nye skyd-for-at-dræbe ordre, vedtaget på baggrund af andre landes erfaringer med selvmordsbombere (bla Rusland og Israel). De fleste har overset at Storbritannien allerede en gang før har anvendt en sådan ordre, både ved politiet og militære specialstyrker. I begge tilfælde med udmærkede resultater, og i begge tilfælde blev ordrerne suspenderet, i politiets tilfælde efter at have kostet en uskyldig livet, i militærets efter at have kostet tre meget skyldige, men ubevæbnede terrorister livet. Lidt om militærets baghold:

..the British army's elite Special Air Service mounted several brutally effective ambushes that involved covert SAS units watching IRA members. They opened fire, allegedly, only at the moment that an IRA member picked up a gun or committed another action that could threaten the lives of others.

The biggest ambush happened in October 1987, when an SAS unit acting on an informer tip-off surrounded a village police station that the IRA planned to bomb. The soldiers did allow the IRA unit to blow up the station, then obliterated all seven IRA men with more than 600 rounds of ammunition. They also killed an innocent Catholic civilian wrongly identified as part of the gang.

The SAS fueled an international furor in March 1988, when it trailed an IRA unit to the British territory of Gibraltar, and shot to death three IRA members at close range. All three had been planning a bomb attack on a British military parade but were unarmed when killed.

The SAS members defended their actions in court by claiming all three made threatening moves — either to grab a weapon or to trigger a bomb — in the split second before they were shot.

Witnesses, however, claimed they saw two of the IRA members put their hands in the air before they were shot, while a third was "finished off" when lying on the ground.

The British army mounted its last lethal ambush in Northern Ireland in 1992, when four IRA men were gunned down after raking a police station with machine gun fire.

Vi er ikke kommet dertil igen endnu.

Henrik

Loony Left i USA - nu helt uden hjerne

Vi har vores egne venstreradikale multi-hadere her i Danmark - noget bla Kim fra Uriasposten kan tale med om - men de er vand ved siden af hvad den amerikanske version kan finde på - derovre respekterer de ikke engang de døde:

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell promised yesterday to apologize to the family of a slain Marine after his lieutenant governor, Catherine Baker Knoll, showed up at the Marine's funeral and trashed the Iraq war.

"I want you to know our government is against this war," Ms. Knoll allegedly told grieving relatives of Staff Sgt. Joseph Goodrich, 32, as his flag-draped casket sat just feet away.

Sgt. Goodrich's sister-in-law, Rhonda Goodrich, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the state's No. 2 Democrat had shown up uninvited and planted herself with relatives near the front of the church. ..

"I am amazed and disgusted Knoll finds a Marine funeral a prime place to campaign," she told the paper.

Knoll prøvede at spinne sig ud af sagen med en lam undskyldning om, at hun var blevet "misforstået" - så er det jo ikke hende der er dum, bare den sørgende familie:

In her own letter of apology released to the national press late Monday, Knoll said she was horrified that her actions had been misinterpreted, insisting that she was merely trying to signal "my willingness to help the family through this difficult time in any way I can."

Efter amerikanske forhold er det imidlertid småting. Fem dage efter ovennævnte sag skete følgende i nabostaten Ohio:

FAIRFIELD, Ohio -- Less than 24 hours after an Ohio soldier was buried, someone pulled up 20 American flags from his father-in-law's front yard and set fire to them under a car in the driveway, according to WLWT-TV in Cincinnati.

The family of Pfc. Timothy Hines and neighbors can't understand why someone would do that. "If it wasn't random vandalism, what statement were they trying to make?" said Jim Wessels, Hines' father-in-law.

The car, belonging to Wessel's daughter, was burned beyond repair.

Mens politiet prøver at få fat i de idioter der har gjort det prøver naboer, venner og vildt fremmede at mildne tabet med en sagnomspundne amerikanske gavmildhed (amerikanere giver årligt over 200 milliarder $ til velgørenhed):

Members of a local church stepped in and helped clean up, and 200 flags donated by family, friends and neighbors were put up around the lawn.

"I was in the military also," Don Hodges told WLWT-TV. "I understand some of what he had to go through before he was killed. And I appreciate all that the veterans done for the country." ..

Hines met his wife, Katy, at Cincinnati Christian School. They had a 2-year-old daughter, Lily, and Katy expects to give birth to their second child in about two weeks.

An anonymous donor gave Cincinnati Christian $130,000 to cover tuition for Hines' children.

Hvil i fred, Joseph Goodrich

Hvil i fred, Timothy Hines.

Henrik

Bedstemødre i krig

BBC har en historie om en flok gamle kvinder, der har chikaneret et rekrutterings-kontol i Tucson, og nu skal for retten for det:

Elderly members of a US anti-war group called the "raging grannies of Tucson" are due in court following a protest at an Arizona military recruitment centre.

They have been accused of trespassing after entering the centre earlier this month, saying they wanted to enlist. ...

An army spokeswoman says the protesters were not serious about enlisting and were harassing recruiters.

Tja.....var det ikke en ide bare at acceptere at de har meldt sig frivilligt, smide en riffel i hovedet på dem og sende dem til Irak?

Bare en tanke.

Henrik

Amnesty International: Irakiske "oprørere" = krigsforbrydere

Taget meget af det anti-amerikanske spin Amnesty International har losset ud i betragtning (jeg meldte mig ud sidste måned at samme grund) formår organisationen faktisk at være overraskende fornuftig i rapporten In cold blood: abuses by armed groups:

War crimes

Under customary international humanitarian law, war crimes can be committed during international and non-international armed conflicts.(142) They include acts such as wilful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; taking of hostages; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population; intentionally directing attacks against people involved in humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping; indiscriminate attacks, which violate fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction between civilians and civilian objects, on the one hand, and members of armed forces and military objectives, on the other; killing those who have surrendered; attacking religious institutions; and "[k]illing or wounding treacherously a combatant adversary"(143), for example by approaching enemy soldiers pretending to be a civilian so as to attack them by surprise.

Many of the acts perpetrated by armed groups in Iraq during both the international and non-international phases of the conflict since March 2003 constitute war crimes. ...

Crimes against humanity

Under customary international law, as reflected in the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity are acts specified by the Statute committed as part of a ''widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population'', ''pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack."(145) Among the relevant crimes listed in the Statute are murder, unlawful imprisonment, torture and other inhumane acts.(146) Acts that constitute war crimes may also amount to crimes against humanity if they meet the requirements of the definition.

Such acts have been committed by armed groups in Iraq as part of attacks against civilians that are widespread and systematic, and perpetrated as part of a publicly declared policy to target civilians. The attacks therefore satisfy the definition of crimes against humanity.

Hvis man ser bort fra at de stadig kalder terroristerne for "bevæbnede grupper", så lyder det jo næsten fornuftigt. De gjorde akkurat det samme med de islamiske terrorister, der hærgede Egypten i 1990erne.

Henrik

En ægte hippie går amok i metroXpress

Normalt læser jeg læserbreve for underholdningens skyld, men i gårsdagens metroXpress var der et, der med sin gennemførte stupiditet ligefrem tigger om at blive blogget. Jeg tager de vigtigeste bidder:

11. September 2001. Denne dag fandt den værste terror-aktion sted i New
York. Efterfølgende fortæller præsident Bush verden, at Irak gemmer atomvåben.

Nej, det har han faktisk aldrig sagt. Løgn nr. 1.

Våbeninspektørerne fra FN finder ikke noget,

Jo da - løgn nr. 2. De fandt for eksempel en del ballistiske missiler Irak ikke måtte have. Selv efter de var blevet ødelagt havde Irak flere, der blev affyret mod Kuwait under krigen.

men alligevel vælger USA at gå i krig mod Irak uden om FNs Sikkerhedsråd,

Løgn nr. 3. FNs sikkerhedsråd legaliserede krig via resolution 678. Resolution 687 skabte en våbenhvile, som resolution 1441 sagde Irak havde brudt.

Men Irak har aldrig været en atomtrussel.

Det passer nu heller ikke. Siden 1971 havde Irak forsøgt at få atomvåben, og havde købt en reaktor af Frankrig der kunne give Sadam 125 kilogram plutonium årligt. Israelerne så faren, prøvede at sprænge reaktorkernen i luften to gange, og lykkedes i andet forsøg i 1981, før reaktoren blev kritisk. Skal vi kalde det løgn nr 4?

Hvis vi mente, at truslen om atomvåben var årsagen til invasionen var årsagen til invasionen, ville vi også angribe Nordvietnam, der HAR atomvåben og har vist dem frem.

Til at starte med har der ikke været noget land der hed Nordvietnam siden 1976, da de vietnamesiske kommunister invaderede Sydvietnam, tvangsindlemmede landet og kaldte det nye land Vietnam. Men mon ikke det bare er en venstreradikal hippie, der hænger fast i 60erne, og ikke er kommet videre siden?
Vi antager han mener Nordkorea. Der antager man rigtig nok at Norkorea har atomvåben, men de har nu aldrig vist dem frem. Lad os kalde det løgn nr 5.

Hvad så med Hussein? For var angrebet ikke en måde at afsætte en diktator,
der undertrykte sin befolkning?

Joda. Det er hele tre sætninger i streg uden løgne.

Måske, men hvis det var den virkelige årsag til angrevet, burd vi så ikke også
fjerne Mugabe in Zimbabwe, der har flere civile liv på samvittigheden end
Saddam?

Løgn nummer 6. Godt nok er Mugabe en skidt ka´l der undertrykker sit eget folk og ingen problemer har med at få slået folk ihjel, men Saddam var langt mere "effektiv" end Mugabe.
Dertil kommer to andre problemer:
1) Krig mod Zimbabwe er ikke retfærdiggjort, hverken af FN eller en anden regional organisation
2) De eks-socialistiske lande rundt om Zimbabwe tillader ikke nogen at hjælpe Zimbabwes befolkning, og uden tilladelse fra dem kan der jo af gode grunde ikke sendes tropper til Zimbabwe.
Vi kunne selvfølgelig besætte hele det sydlige afrika og styrte de korrupte regimer lokalbefolkningen lider under....

Hvad giver os ret til at besætte et andet land, vælte deres styreform og indføre
den styreform, vi finder, er den rigtige?

Tja.....sikkerhedsrådsresolution 678, for eksempel?
Herefter går det helt galt for hippien, og der er bonus-relativisering så det forslår:

Hvis man vender den om, har en islamisk stat så ret til at besætte Danmark og
indføre præstestyre her?

Det gode er, at så længe den radikale venstrefløj hænger fast i 60´erne, så kan mere fornuftige folk komme til at styre landet.

Henrik

Dagens lyspunkt

Jeg må indrømme jeg har et svagt punkt for sarkasme. Filtrat leverer et eksempel idag, der fik mig til at klukke et par minutter efter jeg havde læst det:

Egypten bør styrke integrationen

Egyptisk politi jager seks pakistanere efter bombeangreb

:-)

Henrik

Sund fornuft spredes

Her i blogosfæren er vi en del, der har brokket os over at store dele af medierne nægter at forholde sig til virkeligheden ved feks at kalde terrorister for....tja, terrorister.

Jeg har tidligere her på bloggen nævnt hvordan BBC, efter London blev ramt af terrorangreb kaldte terroristerne for terrorister. Det tod dem imidlertid kun et par timer at skifte mening igen og udslette næsten alle spor af det, så de kunne kalde dem "bombebænd" istedet.

Andre steder bider den sunde fornuft sig istedet fat - i Dallas News, feks (via Angantyrs Hjørne):

Today, this editorial board resolves to sacrifice another word – "insurgent" – on the altar of precise language. No longer will we refer to suicide bombers or anyone else in Iraq who targets and kills children and other innocent civilians as "insurgents."

People who set off bombs on London trains are not insurgents. We would never think of calling them anything other than what they are – terrorists.

Train bombers in Madrid? Terrorists.

Chechen rebels who take over a Russian school and execute children? Terrorists.

Teenagers who strap bombs to their chests and detonate them in an Israeli cafe? Terrorists.

IRA killers? Basque separatist killers? Hotel bombers in Bali? Terrorists all.

Words have meanings. Whether too timid, sensitive or "open-minded," we've resisted drawing a direct line between homicidal bombers everywhere else in the world and the ones who blow up Iraqi civilians or behead aid workers.

No more. To call them "insurgents" insults every legitimate insurgency in modern history. They are terrorists.

Vel brølt.

Henrik

Multi-tuderi

Efter terror-bomberne i Egypten tuder rejse-industrien over deres udgifter til at hente de folk hjem de selv sendte derned ikke bliver dækket af udenrigsministeriet, der netop advarede dem mod at tage til Egypten.

Tja....hvad med om de betalte selv?

Mere på Minut og Filtrat. Angantyrs Hjørne citerer et udmærket læserbrev fra Jyllandsposten:

Udstillet i al sin ynk af medierne, som sædvanligt.

Folk, som kunne have følt sig helt trygge ved en ferie på Bornholm, skal absolut søge ud til steder med risiko for vulkanudbrud, oversvømmelser, jordskælv og terrorisme.

Og når det så går galt, ja, så kan de ikke komme hjem hurtigt nok på Udenrigsministeriets regning - læs: for mine skattepenge.

Det er klart, at folk skal have nødvendig hjælp, men deres krav er til tider helt nede på vuggestueplan.

Behøver man sige mere?

Henrik

Iraq bodycount og deres metoder

Tidligere på ugen kom iraqbodycount.com (herefter IBC) ud med en rapport, hvori de påstår at de har dokumenteret næsten 25.000 drab i Irak. Problemet er, at deres rapport ikke hænger sammen på nogen som helst måder - den ramler sammen bare man kigger hårdt på den. Et godt udgangspunkt at tage fat i deres pressemeddelelse (eller rettere: de vigtigste dele af den), som jeg har tænkt mig at kommentere del for del:

Who was killed?
- 24,865 civilians were reported killed in the first two years.

Nej. Selv om IBC godt kan lide at sige at de har "dokumenteret" så mange civiles død, så er en meget stor del af antallet deciderede gæt, baseret på lighus-tal de har fået fat i. Tag den note de har knyttet til dere "nøjagtige" tal for delrapport 334a-f (der står for godt 1600 af de rapporterede dødsfald):

1. To allow for the sentence in the reports which reads "Also, the bodies of killed fighters from groups like the al-Mahdi Army are rarely taken to morgues,"an estimate of "between 1 in 50 to 1 in 25" was used to represent the "rare" presence of fighters in the morgue statistics.

Det er det man kalder "et gæt".

AP's Baghdad figure was accordingly reduced by 4 per cent and 2 percent to produce "fighter-free" minimum and maximum estimates.

2. These numbers were further reduced by morgue data for the equivalent 2002-2003 periods (and locations) to provide an adjustment for normal "background" death rates unattributable to the war and its aftermath. It is only the difference between the pre- and post-invasion rates which are recorded here.

Problemet er så, at dette ikke tager højde for, at Saddam løslod stort set samtlige kriminelle i irakiske fængsler sidst i oktober 2002 - godt 100.000 af dem. At sammenligne med perioder før denne løsladelse giver derfor ingen mening.

4. We also allowed for the statement from the director of statistics at the Baghdad morgue that "The figure [reported by the morgue] does not include most people killed in big terrorist bombings": Where there were existing, potentially-overlapping records of this nature identified in step 3, above, those overlaps were reduced by "half+1" for overlaps smaller than 10 and by 60 per cent for larger ones — "60 per cent" being our interpretation of the term "most" as used here.

Igen: rene gæt. Men tilbage til pressemeddelelsen:

When did they die?
- 30% of civilian deaths occurred during the invasion phase before 1 May 2003. ..
Who did the killing?
- US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.

Det er her, det begynder at lugte - kraftigt, endda. Ser De, for i det hele taget at kunne tilskrive "USA-ledede" styrker 37% af de drab de mener at have dokumenteret tilskriver IBC dem SAMTLIGE dødsfald under hele invasionen og frem til 1. Maj 2003, kun fratrukket de der specifikt er sket under plyndring og etniske opgør. Om så Saddams bødler havde massakreret hele iraks befolkning havde det været ligegyldigt - det var nemlig sket før 1. Maj 2003, og derfor har USA-ledede styrker per definition bare slået dem ihjel, punktum. IBC formulerer det lidt mere floromvundet på side 11 i rapporten:

Different considerations apply during the invasion phase (which we define as 20 March to 30 April 2003) and the postinvasion phase (from 1 May 2003 to the end of the period). During the invasion phase all deaths which occurred as a direct result of US-led military offensives have been attributed to US-led forces alone. This is because (a) the great majority of civilian deaths reported in this so-called ‘shock and awe’ phase resulted from US-led air attacks – primarily bombing raids (see The Killers fact sheet 3), for which Iraqi forces could share no responsibility; and (b) there were no comparable Iraqi military offensives reported for this period. Deaths by criminal action (e.g. theft, looting) or inter-ethnic tensions (e.g. revenge killings) did, however, take place in the invasion phase, and are classified accordingly.

Af samme grund er 74% af samtlige dødsfald som IBC tilskriver amerikansk-ledede styrker at finde i invasionsfasen. Men tilbage til resten af pressemeddelelsen :

- Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.
- Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.
- Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.

Her begynder rapporten at gå fra at lugte til decideret at stinke. Pressemeddelelsen giver os følgende billede af dødsfaldene:

37% tilskrives amerikanskledede styrker
36% tilskrives kriminalitet
9% tilskrives "anti-besættelses-styrker"

Den sidste formulering er vigtig. Som den opmærksomme og let matematisk begavede læser vil have opdaget er 37+36+9 nemlig ikke lig 100. Den reelle opdeling i kategorier IBC har foretaget er nemlig som følger (side 10 i rapporten):

37,3% Amerikanskledede styrker (og deraf altså 27,7% før og 9,6% efter 1. maj 2003)
35,9% Kriminalitet
11,0% Ukendte gerningsmænd
9,5% Anti-besættelses-styrker
2,5% Både amerikansk-ledede og anti-besættelses-styrker involveret
2,5% Sundhedsministeriums-definerede militær-aktioner
1,3% Sundhedsministeriums-definerede terror-aktioner

Det første spørgsmål man stiller sig selv er "Hvorfor F***** er terror-aktioner ikke inkluderet under anti-besættelses-styrker"?????? Det bliver endnu værre når man kigger på hvad kategorien "andre" reelt står for (rapporten, side 11) :

When we could not be sure that targets were occupation-related we classified the killers as ‘unknown agents’. This included attacks which apparently targeted only civilians and lacked any identifiable military objective – for instance suicide bombs in markets and mosques, or attacks apparently motivated by personal or inter-group vendettas.

Det er pga disse to sidste kategorier, at vi har fået formuleringen "anti-besættelses-styrker". Hvis man bare slår uskyldige irakere ihjel med vilje er man jo ikke "anti-BESÆTTELSE". Men hvis vi rationaliserer lidt i kategorierne ville billedet ende med at ligne noget i retning af følgende:

37,3% Koalitions-styrker (inkluderer forøvrigt irakiske styrker)
35,9% Kriminalitet
21,8% "oprørere"
5,0% Koalitions- og "oprørs"-styrker

Hvis vi udelukkende kigger på tiden efter invasionen (og altså sorterer IBCs manipulering med dødsfaldene under invasionen fra), og reducerer fokus til udelukkende at være på kamphandlinger og terror ender vi med noget i retning af dette billede af de godt 9.000 dødsfald IBC har "dokumenteret" indtil marts 2005 (let afrundede procenter af mig):

60% "oprørere"
26% Koalitions-styrker
14% Begge parter

Interessant billede, ikke? Det er bare ikke det, vi får serveret.
Nå ja, mens vi er ved det, så får vi i IBCs pressemeddelelse også en løftet pegefinger fra IBC:

The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq.

Vel er det da ej. Vi bliver tvangsfodret med en sand kaskade af historier om det. Bare tag ugen op til IBCs egen rapport:

- 12. Juli - Ukendt irakisk "humanitær organisation" siger 128.000 dræbt i Irak
- 12. Juli - Small Arms Survey siger 39.000 dræbt i Irak
- 14. Juli - Irakisk ministerium siger 8,175 irakere dræbt af oprørere på 10 måneder
- 19. Juli - IBC siger 25.000 dræbt i Irak

Det virker ikke særligt "glemt" på mig.

Henrik

PS. Og undskyld det blev så langt et indlæg.

Respekt II

Jeg er faktisk pænt ked af, at jeg ikke har fået blogget om dette. Alle kan vel huske at Pizza-Åge formente Franskmænd og Tyskere adgang til sit pizzaria på baggrund af deres regeringers illoyalitet over for vestlige værdier. Man kan synes hvad man vil om dette, men når det kommer til stykket var alt manden gjorde jo at sortere i hvem han gav adgang til sin private ejendom.

Og det skulle han ikke slippe godt fra. Mens der blev udøvet hærværk på hans pizzaria faldt indtægterne fra det brat, og domstolene idømte ham en betragtelig bøde, som han nægtede at betale af princip. Derfor røg han ind for at sidde bøden af i otte dage. Hans reaktion? Chicago Sun-Times:

''Eight days is a small price to pay when American soldiers go to Iraq and risk their limbs and lives,'' he said by telephone.

Respekt for den mand.

Henrik

Deja vu

Jeg ved jeg er lidt sent på den med det, men Max Boot havde et udmærket indlæg i LA Times for halvanden uges tid siden, som reaktion på den første bølge af terrorangreb på London (LA Times).

Whether it's Hitler or Bin Laden, history teaches the dire consequences of appeasement.

Appeasement did not end with the German invasion of Poland in 1939. Even afterward, many in Britain (and even more in the U.S.) opposed active resistance. Conservative worthies like Lord Halifax sought a negotiated settlement. Fascists like Sir Oswald Mosley sought to bring Nazism to Britain. And communists and their fellow travelers opposed fighting Stalin's ally until Hitler invaded Russia.

Even in January 1942, when German armies were at the gates of Moscow, George Orwell wrote in Partisan Review that "the greater part of the very young intelligentsia are anti-war … don't believe in any 'defense of democracy,' are inclined to prefer Germany to Britain, and don't feel the horror of Fascism that we who are somewhat older feel."

As if to illustrate Orwell's point, a pacifist poet named D.S. Savage wrote a reply in which he explained why he "would never fight and kill for such a phantasm" as "Britain's 'democracy.' " Savage saw no difference between Britain and its enemies because under the demands of war both were imposing totalitarianism: "Germans call it National Socialism. We call it democracy. The result is the same."

Savage naively wondered, "Who is to say that a British victory will be less disastrous than a German one?" Savage thought the real problem was that Britain had lost "her meaning, her soul," but "the unloading of a billion tons of bombs on Germany won't help this forward an inch." "Personally," he added, with hilarious understatement, "I do not care for Hitler." But he thought the way to resist Hitler was by not resisting him: "Whereas the rest of the nation is content with calling down obloquy on Hitler's head, we regard this as superficial. Hitler requires, not condemnation, but understanding."

Hvor er det nu man har hørt noget lignende for nyligt?

When applied to the embodiment of pure evil, the usual liberal tropes about "understanding" not "condemnation" have an air of Monty Python about them. Yet there are uncomfortable echoes of Savage's sermonizing in the attitude of many modern-day intellectuals toward the Islamo-fascist threat.

The BBC now refuses to refer to the London terrorists as "terrorists." They are to be known by the more neutral term "bombers," lest the public be deceived by "the careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments." Value judgments about blowing up innocent commuters? How gauche!

Enlightened opinion ranging from Amnesty International to Dick Durbin joins in this moral relativism by suggesting that the United States has become no better than its enemies through the actions it has taken to prevent terrorism. Just as 1940s pacifists could see no difference between Nazi concentration camps and British wartime curtailments of civil liberties, so today's doppelgangers equate the abuses of renegade guards at Abu Ghraib with the mass murder carried out by Stalin or Pol Pot.

There is also an enduring tendency to blame the victim. George Galloway, Saddam Hussein's favorite member of Britain's Parliament, suggests that Londoners "paid the price" for their government's "attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq." The implication is that Al Qaeda has reasonable grievances and if only we could satisfy them — by, for instance, exiting Iraq — we would have peace. The same thing was said about Hitler, who complained that Germany had been wronged by the Treaty of Versailles.

The problem was that Hitler's stated demands were a pretext for his maniacal ambitions. He was unappeasable. So is Osama bin Laden, who wants to avenge centuries of humiliation supposedly suffered by Muslims at Christian hands and who dreams of establishing a Taliban-style caliphate over all the lands once dominated by Muslims, from western China to southern Spain. Pulling out of Iraq would only whet his insatiable appetite for destruction, just as giving up the Sudetenland encouraged Hitler to seek more.

Orwell's words, written in October 1941, ring true today: "The notion that you can somehow defeat violence by submitting to it is simply a flight from fact. As I have said, it is only possible to people who have money and guns between themselves and reality."

Har jeg nogensinde nævnt at Orwell er en af mine yndlings-forfattere?

Henrik

En anden vinkel på Bush´s skattelettelser

George Bush har måttet høre meget for hans skatte-sænkning først i hans første præsident-periode, og hvordan den efter sigende er skyld i det store amerikanske budget-underskud. Kevin Hassett har en interessant vinkel på Bloomberg.com:

Bring back the Clinton administration. Well, maybe not all of it, but at least its spending habits.

While the Bush administration is celebrating the growing economy and pointing to its tax cuts as the reason for last week's news about a smaller budget deficit, there is this one glaring reality: Spending growth under George W. Bush has been almost four times as high as it was during the same period of Bill Clinton's presidency.

No two-term president in post-war U.S. history has ever presided over a spending binge this monumental in his first six years in office.

How could Bush get away with it? Easy. Everybody has been too busy squabbling over the tax cuts. ...

As author Brian Anderson ably documents in his bestselling new book ``South Park Conservatives,'' the major TV networks regularly referred to the tax cuts as ``huge,'' ``very big,'' or ``massive'' as they were introduced.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry centered his presidential campaign on their repeal, and his rhetoric implied that he could deliver the moon and the stars with all of the revenue he would gain by taking back the Bush tax cuts. ...

This is incorrect, and profoundly so. The problem is that both parties have an incentive to misrepresent the tax cuts. The Democrats get to portray Republicans as irresponsible ideologues, and the Republicans get to pretend to deliver big changes to their supply-side base even when they are miniscule. The tax cut I received doesn't feel ``massive.'' Does yours? Let's tune out the chatter for a minute and just do the math. One easy way to gain perspective is to compare the situation before Bush took office with today. ...

The spending story is much different. The 2000 forecast expected that total outlays in 2006 would be $2.1 trillion; now the CBO expects spending to be $2.5 trillion, a ``massive'' miss. And the 2000 forecast underestimates future years by even more, with the spending for 2009 projected to be $535 billion higher than was expected just before Bush took office.

If Bush had vowed when he took office to never spend more than Clinton planned to, then the budget office would be projecting a 10-year surplus of about $3.6 trillion, even assuming that all of the Bush tax cuts are made permanent. ...

Instead, based on Bush's proposed 2006 budget, we are looking at a 10-year deficit of $2.6 trillion. Tax cuts didn't cause the deficit. At best, they approximately paid for themselves. Spending is the true culprit. ...

Even the later forecasts, however, support the view that spending is the main culprit. And homeland security and defense aren't the problem.

Even if we amend the Clinton numbers to allow the homeland security and defense spending surges to occur, the budget would still have a surplus of around $2 trillion with today's revenues. So the tax cuts may have cost a great deal less over time because they stimulated growth. But spending has been so out of control that it has offset the good news on revenue.

The conclusion is obvious: From the education bill to the prescription drug benefit to the war on terror, spending has spun out of control.

Hvad meget få har forstået er, at Bush faktisk har kørt samme taktik som Fogh har i Danmark og Blair i Storbritannien: Hold styr på dit eget bagland samtidig med at du tager modstandernes mærkesager fra dem. Derfor har USA under Bush set massive forbedringer i sundheds- og undervisnings-sektoren, ulandshjælpen er blevet drastisk udvidet osv.

Det er også derfor det demokratiske parti i USA er så hysterisk omkring Rove-sagen og udnævnelsen af FN-ambassadører og højesteretsdommere: Bush har taget samtlige deres mærkesager fra dem.

Problemet er så, at det koster. Meget.

Henrik

Multi-kulturens sejr over den sunde fornuft

Mark Steyn havde tidligere på ugen et fænomenalt indlæg i The Daily Telegraph. Jeg kan helt ærligt ikke få mig selv til at klippe i det, så De får hele molevitten i et stykke. Så kan de klikke dem selv over på The Daily Telegraph og læse hele molevitten en gang til bagefter :-):

It has been sobering this past week watching some of my "woollier" colleagues (in Vicki Woods's self-designation) gradually awake to the realisation that the real suicide bomb is "multiculturalism". Its remorseless tick-tock, suddenly louder than the ethnic drumming at an anti-globalisation demo, drove poor old Boris Johnson into rampaging around this page last Thursday like some demented late-night karaoke one-man Fiddler on the Roof, stamping his feet and bellowing, "Tradition! Tradition!" Boris's plea for more Britishness was heartfelt and valiant, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. The London bombers were, to the naked eye, assimilated - they ate fish 'n' chips, played cricket, sported appalling leisurewear. They'd adopted so many trees we couldn't see they lacked the big overarching forest - the essence of identity, of allegiance. As I've said before, you can't assimilate with a nullity - which is what multiculturalism is.

So, if Islamist extremism is the genie you're trying to put back in the bottle, it doesn't help to have smashed the bottle. As the death of the Eurofanatic Ted Heath reminds us, in modern Britain even a "conservative" prime minister thinks nothing of obliterating ancient counties and imposing on the populace fantasy jurisdictions - "Avon", "Clwyd" and (my personal favourite in its evocative neo-Stalinism) "Central Region" - and an alien regulatory regime imported from the failed polities of Europe. The 7/7 murderers are described as "Yorkshiremen", but, of course, there is no Yorkshire: Ted abolished that, too.

Sir Edward's successor, Mr Blair, said on the day of the bombing that terrorists would not be allowed to "change our country or our way of life". Of course not. That's his job - from hunting to Europeanisation. Could you reliably say what aspects of "our way of life" Britain's ruling class, whether pseudo-Labour like Mr Blair or pseudo-Conservative like Sir Ted, wish to preserve? The Notting Hill Carnival? Not enough, alas.

Consider the Bishop of Lichfield, who at Evensong, on the night of the bombings, was at pains to assure his congregants: "Just as the IRA has nothing to do with Christianity, so this kind of terror has nothing to do with any of the world faiths." It's not so much the explicit fatuousness of the assertion so much as the broader message it conveys: we're the defeatist wimps; bomb us and we'll apologise to you. That's why in Britain the Anglican Church is in a death-spiral and Islam is the fastest-growing religion. There's no market for a faith that has no faith in itself. And as the Church goes so goes the state: why introduce identity cards for a nation with no identity?

It was the Prime Minister's wife, you'll recall, who last year won a famous court victory for Shabina Begum, as a result of which schools across the land must now permit students to wear the full "jilbab" - ie, Muslim garb that covers the entire body except the eyes and hands. Ms Booth hailed this as "a victory for all Muslims who wish to preserve their identity and values despite prejudice and bigotry". It seems almost too banal to observe that such an extreme preservation of Miss Begum's Muslim identity must perforce be at the expense of any British identity. Nor, incidentally, is Miss Begum "preserving" any identity: she's of Bangladeshi origin, and her adolescent adoption of the jilbab is a symbol of the Arabisation of South Asian (and African and European) Islam that's at the root of so many problems. It's no more part of her inherited identity than my five-year- old dressing up in his head-to-toe Darth Vader costume, to which at a casual glance it's not dissimilar.

Is it "bigoted" to argue that the jilbab is a barrier to acquiring the common culture necessary to any functioning society? Is it "prejudiced" to suggest that in Britain a Muslim woman ought to reach the same sartorial compromise as, say, a female doctor in Bahrain? Apparently so, according to Cherie Booth.

One of the striking features of the post-9/11 world is the minimal degree of separation between the so-called "extremists" and the establishment: Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington, gives $130,000 to accomplices of the 9/11 terrorists; the head of the group that certifies Muslim chaplains for the US military turns out to be a bagman for terrorists; one of the London bombers gets given a tour of the House of Commons by a Labour MP. The Guardian hires as a "trainee journalist" a member of Hizb ut Tahir, "Britain's most radical Islamic group" (as his own newspaper described them) and in his first column post-7/7 he mocks the idea that anyone could be "shocked" at a group of Yorkshiremen blowing up London: "Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don't-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We're much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks" - or the bus blows, or the Tube vaporises. Fellow Guardian employee David Foulkes, who was killed in the Edgware Road blast, would no doubt be heartened to know he'd died for the cause of Muslim "sassiness".

But among all these many examples of the multiculti mainstream ushering the extremists from the dark fringe to the centre of western life, there is surely no more emblematic example than that of Shabina Begum, whose victory over the school dress code was achieved with the professional support of both the wife of the Prime Minister who pledges to defend "our way of life" and of Hizb ut Tahir, a group which (according to the German Interior Minister) "supports violence as a means to realise political goals" such as a worldwide caliphate and (according to the BBC) "urges Muslims to kill Jewish people". What does an "extremist" have to do to be too extreme for Cherie Booth or the Guardian?

Oh, well. Back to business as usual. In yesterday's Independent, Dave Brown had a cartoon showing Bush and Blair as terrorists boarding the Tube to Baghdad. Ha-ha. The other day in Thailand, where 800 folks have been killed by Islamists since the start of the year, two Laotian farm workers were beheaded. I suppose that's Bush and Blair's fault, too.

I'd like to think my "woolly liberal" colleague Vicki Woods and the woolly sorta-conservative Boris Johnson represent the majority. If they do, you've got a sporting chance. But in the end Cherie Booth and Dave Brown and the Bishop of Lichfield will get you killed. Best of British, old thing.

Vel brølt.

Henrik

Gandhi, den gamle nar

"Mahatma" Gandhi bliver normalt berømmet som en fætter der havde noget med ikke-voldelig modstand at gøre, og man får gerne at høre at det var godt. Noget færre mennesker ved er, at han levede i cølibat fra 1905 af. Hvad noget sådant kan føre til kan man bla læse på wikipedia:

In 1940, when invasion of the British Isles by the armed forces of Nazi Germany looked imminent, Gandhi offered the following advice to the British people:

I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions.... If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them. (Non-Violence in Peace and War)

He also urged Jews and Czechs to commit a mass suicide as an act of non-violent resistance against Nazi occupation. In June 1946 he told his biographer, Louis Fischer:

Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs... that would have been heroism.

Man fortryder næsten at Briterne og deres 2 millioner indiske soldater (det var nemlig kun et mindretal af dem, der gad høre på hans pacifistiske bavl) stod i vejen for at Gandhi kunne have fået et nærmere kendskab til Japanernes dødslejre og -marcher.

Henrik

Terror-onkel truer med flere angreb på London

For en uge siden blev onklen til en af selvmordsbomberne der slog 56 uskyldige ihjel for lidt over to uger siden interviewet af The News of the World" (ZNews)

The uncle of Shahzad Tanweer, one of the four London bomb suspects, has defended his nephew's actions as a desperate "sacrifice" in an interview with the British tabloid newspaper 'The News of thee World'.

"These suicide bombers are desperate people," Bashir Ahmed told the Sunday Paper. "They are not getting their rights. They can see that their brothers are not getting their rights, so they take extreme action."

"This lad has made a name for himself in the world. Muslims call it a sacrifice, the Europeans call him a terrorist," he was quoted as saying.

Tanweer's uncle laid the blame for the rush-hour attacks on London's transport network at the feet of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush, warning, "there will be more".

Og sandt nok, kun nogle få dage senere prøvede muslimske terrorister igen at slå snesevis af uskyldige ihjel. Denne gang var de da heldigvis for inkompetente til at opnå deres mål.

Men mon ikke man lige skulle tage et kig på onklen?

Henrik

Respekt!

Som tidligere nævnt her på bloggen har der været store demonstrationer mod terror i Irak. For et par dage siden var der i Tiradens hjemby en lignende (om end noget mindre) anti-terror-demonstration arrangeret af syv irakiske organisationer i Danmark. Det blev understreget at det var en irakisk demonstration, men jeg tror nu alligevel jeg var mødt op for at klappe hvis ikke jeg havde været på arbejde den dag (Fyens Stiftstidende via Polemiken):

Odense-Imam rasede mod terrorister over hele verden, da 70 irakere demonstrerede i Odense i dag.

På Flakhaven tog imam Hassan Al Asady skarpt afstand fra terrorister:

- I skal dræbe os først, hvis I vil dræbe danskerne. Danmark er vores hjemland, og danskerne har respekteret os lige siden vi kom hertil som flygtninge.

…der blev delt løbsedler ud under vejs. Her beskrev de de mennesker som stod bag terrorangrebet i London som barbariske og uden moral. De er slet ikke mennesker, de er værre end utøj, lød det.

Irakerne ville både tage afstand til al terrorisme verden over, og de ville slå fast, at den slags intet har med Islam at gøre, og at terrorister slet ikke har lov at kalde sig for muslimer. Demonstrationen forløb uden dramatik og sluttede med to minutters stilhed på Flakhaven til minde om ofre og deres familier.

Respekt.

Henrik

Meningsmåling blandt britiske muslimer II

Daily Telegraph har også foretaget en meningsmåling blandt britiske muslimer:

The survey in the Daily Telegraph asked the Muslim-only respondents whether they felt the July 7 blasts in which 56 peopled died, including the suicide bombers, were "justified", to which six percent said they were.

Det svarer til at der er godt 100.000 potentielle muslimske selvmordsbombere i Storbritannien.

In contrast, 71 percent said they were not justified at all, with 11 percent saying they were "on balance" not justified.

...hvad så det sidste skal betyde. At terror-angrebene havde været retfærdiggjorte hvis de ikke tilfældigvis også var gået ud over en kvindelig muslimsk aktivist, måske?

However, when asked whether they had sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of the four British Muslim bombers, disregarding their methods, 13 percent said they had a lot of sympathy and a further 11 percent had a little...

Havde der været et samfund udelukkende befolket med de britiske muslimer havde vi set på en terror-krig som i Algeriet i 1990erne. Generelt skal der godt 10% sympatisører og 1-3% aktive kombattanter i en befolkning til for at holde en sådan krig kørende.

Just one percent of the respondents agreed with the statement: "Western society is decadent and immoral, and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, if necessary by violence."

Det svarer til godt 15.000 muslimer. Man spekulerer på hvad der blev af de andre godt 85.000, der mente massakrerne i London var retfærdiggjordte. Taqiyya i arbejde igen?

However, another 31 percent backed the sentiment when the reference to violence was replaced by "but only by non-violent means".

En enorm trøst - der er altså en halv million muslimer i Storbritannien, der mener der bør sættes en stopper for de vestlige samfund. Under danske forhold ville det svare til 50.000 mand.

UPDATE:

En underlig ting jeg lige lagde mærke til: prøv at kigge i linket til artiklen jeg citerer foroven. Et udsnit lyder: "...wl_uk_afp/britainattacksislam...".

"Britain attacks islam"????????????

Henrik

Ironi på højt plan - Broderhjælp til Norge

Chefen for den norske udlændingestyrelse har for nylig været ude i en kronik og argumenteret for at Norge har brug for ikke mindre, men MERE indvandring, og ikke kun af højtuddannede. Nej, Norge mangler åbenbart også ufaglærte arbejdere. Måske med tanke på fødevarehjælpen vi ydede til et Norge på kanten af hungersnød under 2. Verdenskrig har Søren Espersen et udmærket forslag til skandinavisk broderhjælp (pressemeddelelse af Søren Espersen, via Polemiken):

Men hvis erhvervslivet i Norge er skruet sådan sammen, at behovet for ufaglært arbejdskraft er større end i Danmark, ville det da være spildte kræfter, at nordmændene begynder at annoncere efter indvandrere i den tredje verden. Syd for Skagerrak findes nemlig i rigelige mængder den arbejdskraft, nordmændene efterspørger.

Jeg er overbevist om, at Danmark og de øvrige nordiske lande er i stand til at forsyne Norge med den fornødne arbejdskraft, og vi bør her i landet gå foran med at hjælpe et broderland i nød, siger Søren Espersen.

Ahh... ironi på højt plan :-)

Henrik

Guardian tuder over blogosfæren

I England er The Guardian blevet afsløret i at bruge en islamisk fundamentalist fra Hizb-ut-"dræb dem hvor end i finder dem"-Tahrir som skribent. Efter monumentalt pres fra bla blogosfæren har Guardian været nødt til at fyre manden. Bare for at være sikker på at det ikke ser ud som om bladet ikke vil samarbejde med fundamentalister i fremtiden vælger det at pege fingre (Harrys Place via Filtrat):

...The story is a demonstration of the way the 'blogosphere' can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed...

Det er nok ikke ment sådan, men jeg vælger at se det som en kompliment :-)

Henrik

Meningsmåling blandt britiske muslimer I

Zaman Online via Filtrat:

A poll of British Muslims in the United Kingdom revealed that almost half of the participants see themselves as first Muslim then British.

The SKY TV poll indicates 88 percent of Muslims were of the opinion that the Quran does not permit such acts and only five percent expressed the opposite view.

Storbritannien har officielt 1,6 millioner muslimske indbyggere. Fem procent svarer til 80.000 potentielle selvmordsbombere. 80.000 der synes det er fedt at dræbe og lemlæste uskyldige.

Forty-six percent of Muslims say they are first Muslim, then British as opposed to 12 percent which prioritize the British nationalty.

Lover ikke godt for integrationen.

Thirty percent of Muslims condemned the London attacks on July 7 killing 56 people in four different bombings, against only two percent in support.

Jeg kan ikke lade være med at spekulere på de 68% der ikke ville give deres mening til kende. I det hele taget kan man - taqiyya-begrebet ("lyv hvis det gavner islam") in mente - spekulere på hvor mange terror-fans der løj om deres støtte til drab på uskyldige.

Henrik

Muslimer med sårede følelser og danskere uden hjerne

Berlingske Tidende via Uriasposten:

Racistisk rulletekst

“Netop som det går op for flere og flere i Vesten, at vor tids terrorister ikke er fortabte og fattige sjæle fra fjerne jordhuler, men velintegrerede, veluddannede og velstående bymennesker, beklager Islamisk Trossamfund sig over danskernes stigmatisering af herboende muslimer. »Det er ikke særligt sjovt at være muslim og føle, man bliver bevogtet hele tiden,« udtaler talsmand Kasen Ahmad og hentyder til en rulletekst på de københavnske metrostationer. Den racistiske rulletekst beder passagererne »være opmærksomme på mistænkelige pakker og adfærd«..

Den er godt nok - du stigmatiserer muslimer hvis du holder øje med om der er nogle af dem der prøver at lemlæste eller dræbe dig med bomber. En ting er så at tudeprinsen fra det Islamiske Trossamfund synes det, men hvad værre er, så tager folk det faktisk alvorligt:

Alligevel ser beklagelsen ud til at virke. Metro Service agter snart at fjerne den stigmatiserende rulletekst, og kommunikationschef Jesper Witt, hvis generalieblad også må være meget hvidt, håber, at »angsten for terrorangreb stilner af, når rulleteksten bliver fjernet«.

Hvorfor f...... skulle angsten stilne af? Det er jo ikke fordi terroristerne tænker "Nå, nu kigger folk ikke efter vores bomber mere, så kan vi jo lige så godt lade være med at plante dem"!

Appeasement in action.

Henrik

Det globale nabo-værn

To netværks-teoretikere har udkastet et forslag til en måde at bekæmpe global terrorisme: det globale nabo-værn (GovExec.com cia Smart Mobs):

The year is 2010. A salesman, traveling by train from Dulles International Airport to Union Station in Washington, hears a beep emanate from his mobile phone. He's startled, because the sound indicates that a chemical sensor in his briefcase detects the presence of penthrite somewhere in the train car. Penthrite, one of the world's strongest explosives, is used to manufacture a sophisticated form of C-4, the plastic explosive that Richard Reid hid in his shoes when he boarded an American Airlines flight in December 2001.

The salesman quickly scans the train car and spies a beat-up-looking backpack under a seat at the far end. He realizes that his mobile phone has gone off like this before, and nothing dire has transpired. But at the next stop, a woman boards and stands next to the backpack, and a pager-like device strapped to her waist also emits a beeping noise.

As each rider's sensor detects penthrite, it alerts an agent in the National Counterterrorism Center, the U.S. government's fusion point for all terrorism intelligence. Seeing two alarms go off, the agent calls the salesman and sends a text message to the woman, asking them to describe, independently, what they see. How big is the backpack? Where is its owner? What is he wearing? The agent then enters their observations into a powerful computer. The machine quickly churns the information and looks for meaningful patterns, which, hopefully, will reveal whether there's a real attack in the offing.

This vaguely Orwellian futuristic scenario is how two network theorists imagine a country might enlist its citizens in fighting terrorists. They call it Global Neighborhood Watch. Just as a traditional neighborhood watch deputizes people living on the same block to prevent local crime, the global watch would turn participants into mobile intelligence gatherers, feeding data from chemical sensors or simply with their own eyes into a sophisticated, governmentrun system that would create hypotheses about what that data means.

Stof til eftertanke.

Henrik

Irakisk anti-terror demonstration

Nu jeg er i gang med historier vi aldrig får i de danske medier (og som amerikanerne for den sags skyld heller ikke får i deres), så har BlackFive billeder af en irakiske demonstration mod terror fra for 2 uger siden her.

Henrik

En lille opbyggelig historie

Trey Jackson har et indlæg om to islamistiske snigskytter i Irak, komplet med den video de lavede af dem selv mens de skød en amerikansk syghjælper. Amerikaneren - Steven Tschiderer - blev skudt på 75 meters afstand med en Dragunov snigskytteriffel. Imod al logik stoppede hans flakvest kuglen, og da snigskytterne var blevet skudt var det kort efter ham der - usåret - var den der forbandt snigskytternes sår. Det er endnu en historie der aldrig når ud i medierne:

During a routine patrol in Baghdad June 2, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic, was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper, hiding in a van just 75 yards away. The
incident was filmed by the insurgents.

Tschiderer, with E Troop, 101st “Saber” Cavalry Division, attached to 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was knocked to the ground from the impact, but he popped right back up, took cover and located the enemy’s position.

After tracking down the now-wounded sniper with a team from B Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army Brigade, Tschiderer secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.

Man kan se terroristernes video af det forsøgte drab her.

Henrik

11. September på film, og hvad den mon kommer til at handle om

Det lader til at Oliver Stone er blevet valgt til at lave den første film om 11. September. Kausfiles har sine tvivl om hvor objektiv Stone vil være, og refererer fra mandens udtalelser på en panel-debat en måned efter terrorangrebene:

"There's been conglomeration under six principal princes—they're kings, they're barons!—and these six companies have control of the world," he said, referring to such corporations as Fox and AOL Time Warner. His voice grew louder as his ideas took shape. "Michael Eisner decides, 'I can't make a movie about Martin Luther King, Jr.—they'll be rioting at the gates of Disneyland!' That's bullshit! But that's what the new world order is." There was a storm of applause. "They control culture, they control ideas. And I think the revolt of September 11th was about 'Fuck you! Fuck your order—' "

Han minder næsten om Claus von Trier, ikke?

Taget i betragtning at Stone i JFK gjorde Kennedys snigmord til et ondt snigmord af onde højreorienterede gyser man ved tanken om hvad han kan gøre når han får et budget på et par hundrede millioner til at forvanske 11. September.

I selve panel-debatten gik han imidlertid ikke fri - en af panel-deltagerne gider ikke høre på det ævl:

"Excuse me," a fellow-panelist, Christopher Hitchens, said. " 'Revolt'?"

"Whatever you want to call it," Stone said.

"It was state-supported mass murder, using civilians as missiles," said Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation.

Vel brølt.

Henrik

Muslimer i Europa

Financial Times har begået et interaktivt kort, der beskriver hovedparten af EU-landenes muslimske befolkninger, og hvor de kommer fra. Personligt lærte jeg en del. Se det selv her.

Henrik

Hvordan en nyhed twistes

Som før påpeget her på bloggen lader det til at medierne har en kærlighedsaffære med den tit-nævnte Lancet-rapport, der gerne citeres for at "100.000 irakere" er blevet dræbt på grund af invasionen. Problemet er jo så, at denne rapport - ud over at være blevet grundigt diskrediteret - snart er et år gammel.

Nu er der jo så det, at de der betalte for at få den fejlbehæftede rapport lavet ikke så godt kan lade den ligge - og da slet ikke når den nu så belejliget siger netop det de gerne vil have den til.

Ser De, i Schweitz sidder "Small Arms Survey", en organisation der netop har udgivet en rapport der - ud over at være en reel guldmine for informationer om dødsfald i forbindelse med konflikter - også har det problematiske mål at tilskrive så mange dødsfald som overhovedet muligt til skydevåben (deraf navnet). Derfor vælger de da også at bruge de diskrediterede tal fra Lancet-studiet som de har betalt for (sammen med Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies ved Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health), da det er dem der leverer det højest mulige tal - nemlig 39.000. Det er så der problemerne starter.

Påstanden om 39.000 bygger på sammenlagt 21 "voldelige dødsfald". Enogtyve! Dertil kommer at de "voldelige dødsfald" ifølge Lancet-rapporten:

includes 12 violent deaths not attributed to coalition forces, including 11 men and one woman. Of these, two were attributed to anti-coalition forces, two were of unknown origin, seven were criminal murders, and one was from the previous regime during the invasion.

Man holder sig in mente hvor fejlbehæftet Lancet-tallene er i forvejen, og Small Arms Survey siger da også i deres egen rapport følgende:

Of these 100,000 estimated excess deaths, about 40 per cent—an estimated 39,000 deaths—may be the direct result of combat or armed violence

I medierne bliver det så - med undladelsen af et lille ord til (ABC):

Around 39,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since the US-led invasion, a figure considerably higher than previous estimates.

Det udsagn kan så gives endnu et vrid i overskriften:

39,000 Iraqis killed in fighting

Smart, ikke?

Så kan man også samtidig (som samtlige andre medier) vælge at se bort fra at FN har udsendt en rapport der - på baggrund at undersøgelsen af 22.000 husstande i alle Iraks provinser påviser at merdødeligheden blandt irakere ligger (eller lå, da undersøgelsen blev lavet sent sidste år) på mellem 18 og 29.000.

Sammenlign med Lancet-undersøgelsen, der baserer sig på kun 900 husstande i 11 provinser, og når frem til et gæt på mellem 8 og 194.000.

Henrik

Irak og al Qaeda

Der er før kommet en del information ud, der påpeger at Irak og al Qaeda havde en del samarbejde op igennem 1990´erne, om end ikke omkring 11. September. Den amerikanske kongres´ 911 Commision-rapport gik i en del detaljer om dette, men i medierne blev det spinnet som om der INGEN forbindelse var (en grund til til altid at mistænke mainstream-medierne: de er notorisk dovne og gider ikke dobbelttjekke det de får fra de internationale telegram-bureauer). The Weekly Standard har mere, og lægger ud med konklusionerne angående en indsat på Guantanamo:

1. From 1987 to 1989, the detainee served as an infantryman in the Iraqi Army and received training on the mortar and rocket propelled grenades.
2. A Taliban recruiter in Baghdad convinced the detainee to travel to Afghanistan to
join the Taliban in 1994. ..
9. An assistant to Usama Bin Ladin paid the detainee on three separate occasions between 1995 and 1997. ..
11. From 1997 to 1998, the detainee acted as a trusted agent for Usama Bin Ladin, executing three separate reconnaissance missions for the al Qaeda leader in Oman, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
12. In August 1998, the detainee traveled to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi Intelligence for the purpose of blowing up the Pakistan, United States and British embassies with chemical mortars. ..

Interesting. What's more interesting: The alleged plot was to have taken place in August 1998, the same month that al Qaeda attacked two U.S. embassies in East Africa. And more interesting still: It was to have taken place in the same month that the Clinton administration publicly accused Iraq of supplying al Qaeda with chemical weapons expertise and material.

But none of this was interesting enough for any of the major television networks to cover it. Nor was it deemed sufficiently newsworthy to merit a mention in either the Washington Post or the New York Times.

The Associated Press, on the other hand, probably felt obliged to run a story, since the "Summary of Evidence" was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the AP itself. But after briefly describing the documents, the AP article downplayed its own scoop with a sentence almost as amusing as it is inane: "There is no indication the Iraqi's alleged terror-related activities were on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, other than the brief mention of him traveling to Pakistan with a member of Iraqi intelligence." That sentence minimizing the importance of the findings was enough, apparently, to convince most newspaper editors around the country not to run the AP story. ..

We know about this relationship not from Bush administration assertions but from internal Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) documents recovered in Iraq after the war--documents that have been authenticated by a U.S. intelligence community long hostile to the very idea that any such relationship exists.

We know from these IIS documents that beginning in 1992 the former Iraqi regime regarded bin Laden as an Iraqi Intelligence asset. We know from IIS documents that the former Iraqi regime provided safe haven and financial support to an Iraqi who has admitted to mixing the chemicals for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. We know from IIS documents that Saddam Hussein agreed to Osama bin Laden's request to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television. We know from IIS documents that a "trusted confidante" of bin Laden stayed for more than two weeks at a posh Baghdad hotel as the guest of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

We have been told by Hudayfa Azzam, the son of bin Laden's longtime mentor Abdullah Azzam, that Saddam Hussein welcomed young al Qaeda members "with open arms" before the war, that they "entered Iraq in large numbers, setting up an organization to confront the occupation," and that the regime "strictly and directly" controlled their activities. We have been told by Jordan's King Abdullah that his government knew Abu Musab al Zarqawi was in Iraq before the war and requested that the former Iraqi regime deport him. We have been told by Time magazine that confidential documents from Zarqawi's group, recovered in recent raids, indicate other jihadists had joined him in Baghdad before the Hussein regime fell. We have been told by one of those jihadists that he was with Zarqawi in Baghdad before the war. We have been told by Ayad Allawi, former Iraqi prime minister and a longtime CIA source, that other Iraqi Intelligence documents indicate bin Laden's top deputy was in Iraq for a jihadist conference in September 1999.

Læg Saddams betaling til Palæstinensiske familier for at sende deres sønner ind i Israel for at dræbe og lemlæste uskyldige børn, kvinder og mænd, og vi begynder at få et nogenlunde dækkende billede.

Alligevel får vi konstante serveret parti-linjen om at der ingen forbindelser var mellem Irak og al Qaeda.

Henrik

Står muslimer bag terror-angrebet i London? Nej da!

Nu da britisk politi er ved at have identificeret det afskum der slog 52 uskyldige ihjel i London i sidste uge som 4-5 muslimske mænd begynder hvidvaskningen. Denne dækker hele spektrummet, lige fra

1) BBCs rettelser af den indledende "fejl" de lavede ved faktisk at kalde terrorister for terrorister - nu er de "bombemænd":

It appears that for a while yesterday, the BBC website was actually calling the London terrorists "terrorists" instead of "militants" or "bombers"-- their preferred terms for those in Israel and Iraq.

But something changed. Look, for example, at the wording of this Google listing of one BBC article.

Then look at the article it links to.

Decideret redigering af fortiden for bedre at passe til det ønskede billede af den kendte jeg ellers kun fra den tidligere sovjet-blok og George Orwells "1984".

2) Nu jeg er igang med BBC, så lykkes det samtidig stationen på sin "key facts"-side fuldstændig at undgå nogensomhelst hentydning til at terroristerne var muslimer. De var "British nationals" fra "West Yorkshire". Siden har BBC så tilføjet, at de alle var af pakistanst oprindelse. Intet om at de er muslimer (og jo, der er faktisk millioner af Pakistanere der ikke er muslimer - de fleste enten kristne eller hinduer).

3) Så er der benægtelsen af, at det faktisk er de identificerede terrorister der stod bag:

The uncle of one of the suspected London suicide bombers said his family had been "left shattered" by the news.

Bashir Ahmed, 65, said the family of Shehzad Tanweer, who recently studied religion in Pakistan, could not accept he was capable of the bombings.

"It wasn't him. It must have been forces behind him," he said.

4) Den britiske venstrefløj prøver at køre det-er-de-stakkels-muslimer-der-har-gjort-det-fordi-de-bliver-undertrykt-og-deres-religion-har-intet-med-det-at-gøre-rumlen. Den gider jeg ikke engang linke til et eksempel af.

5) Derefter ryger vi ud i det decideret fjollede - Den iranske presse beskylder USA og Storbrittanien for selv at have plantet bomberne:

Kayhan paper says Britain and the US had to create an atmosphere of terror and insecurity in London so that the G8 leaders would endorse their belligerent policies like the occupation of Iraq. ...

While the Jumhuri Islami newspaper says the bombs were planned to give the west a reason to attack Islam under the fictitious cover of combating terrorism.

It said creating problems for Muslims in Europe was also part of the plan.

Muslimer er åbenbart ikke i stand til at foretage terror-angreb.

Så ved vi det.

Henrik

"Der er ingen civile i islamisk lovgivning"

Efter hvert større muslimsk terrorangreb på vesten bliver vi gerne spist af med udtalelser om, at "Islam forbyder mord på uskyldige". Spørgsmålet er så selvfølgelig hvordan man definerer "uskyldige" - ifølge Osama bin Laden er jøder og kristne således per definition ikke uskyldige. Mere oplysning kommer fra MEMRI:

Al-Siba'i: "The term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law. Dr. Karmi is sitting here, and I am sitting here, and I'm familiar with religious law. There is no such term as 'civilians' in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not.

Dar al-Harb er "Krigens hus" - de der endnu ikke er blevet underkastet Islam.

Henrik

Våbenhvile på arabisk

Den palæstinensiske version af en våbenhvile fortsætter:

An explosion at a shopping centre in the Israeli costal town of Netanya has killed at least three people.

Israeli police say it was caused by a suicide bomber, and one report says Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says it was behind the blast.

Rescue services say they are treating at least 30 people, some of them with serious injuries. Schools have broken up for the summer in Israel and there are reports of a number of teenagers among the injured. ...

Earlier, a large explosion was reported near a Jewish settlement in northern West Bank, near the city of Nablus.

It is not clear if it was an intentional car bombing.

BBC´s kommentar fortsætter som følger:

BBC Jerusalem correspondent Lucy Williamson says the explosion in Netanya
follows four months of relative calm in Israel.

"Forholdsvis fred"? Lad os se på hvad BBCs definition af det indebærer:

March 7: Two Israeli soldiers were shot in Hebron, the two were injured, one seriously. [32]
March 10: Israeli troops kill Mohammed Abu Hazneh, a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad and one of the plotter of the recent Tel Aviv "Stage" nightclub suicide bombing. After he shot and killed a K9 dog, the troops bulldozed his house, crushing him to death. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the recent suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv Nightclub. [33]
March 20: Three Israeli soldier and one police officer are wounded (two of them seriously) after they were shot by Palestinians in Ramallah. They entered the city by accident during a search for stolen cars. The Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claim responsibility. [34]
April 5: one Israeli citizen is shot in the chest and critically wounded in the settlement of Morag (northwest to Rafah). The Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility. [35]
April 7: a Qassam rocket hit a cemetery in Sderot, but causes no casualties. [36]
April 9: Israeli soldiers shoot dead three Palestinian teenagers on the edge of Rafah
refugee camp in southern Gaza. Palestinians say the boys were trying to retrieve
a football. Israeli radio reported that Palestinian security services notified
Israel they had detained two boys who were not hit by IDF fire, and that the
group of five youths were smugglers. The IDF is investigating this incident.[37], [38]
April 18: Two Israelis, one engineering NCO and one civilian, where wounded by a Palestinian sniper in attack on Philadelphi Route of southern Gaza. The Popular Resistance Committees claimed responsibility. [39]
April 21: Three Israeli soldiers were hurt in blast when there jeep went on an IED
roadside bomb, near Karni Crossing, on the edge of the Gaza Strip. [40]
April 22 and April 23: A Qassam rocket was launched toward northen Gaza community. No casualties were reported. Also, Palestinian militants stabbed a soldier near Ganim settlement, injuring him moderately. [41]
April 25: Tsiki Eyal, 23, an Israel reserves soldier was killed in Hebron, in an incident involving running Palestinian car. Inital reports said an Israeli reserves soldier was killed, when he was run over by a Palestinian car in Hebron. Soldiers in the scene opened fire and killed the running driver. [42] Autopsy found bullets remain in the soldier's head, suggesting the soldier was hit by his comrades after they opened fire on the running car. [43] Recent reports say that the driver was unarmed and did not have ties to any militant organization. It is still unclear rather the incident was a deliberate attack by the driver or a combination of a dark night and misunderstanding that caused a fatal accident. [44]
May 2: Following an Israeli raid on the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, one Israeli soldier and one Islamic Jihad leader are killed. The soldier is killed in a gunfight with 3 members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The three were suspected to have been part of a the cell which was involved in Tel Aviv "Stage" club bombing in February 2005. Shafiq Abdul Rani, the leader of the Jihad cell in Tulkarm was killed and another militant was arrested. [45]
May 5: Israeli soldiers open fire on a group of stone throwing teenagers, killing two. [46]
May 16: A Palestinian is killed after he tries to stab a soldier. [47]
May 16: Four Israeli construction workers were injured by a Palestinian anti-tank rocket attack on Philadelphi Route. [48]
May 18: It was the peak of a sharp increase in violence in the Gaza Strip after Palestinian factions shelled Israeli settlements and towns with more than 31 mortar shells and Qassam rockets. Two Hamas terrorist were killed this day: one in Rafah, while trying to plant a bomb, and one in Khan Yunis while trying to launch a mortar shell. Palestiniab claim that the Khan Yunis mortar squad was hit by a missile fired from an [UAVunmanned drone]]. Israel refused to comment. [49]
May 20: A big terror attack on an Israeli settlement was thwarted. 3-4 Palestinian terrorists snuck into an abandoned UNRWA structure watching over Kfar Darom settlement and started to bombard the settlement with mortar shells and anti-tank missiles. IDF and MAGAV forces returned fire, killing one terrorist and chasing off the rest. Hamas claimed joint responsibility with the Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and the Popular Resistance Committees. [50], [51]
May 28: A Hamas terrorist was killed after a rocket he was handling has misfired. [52]
May 28: Three Palestinian gunmen opened fire on an Israeli base near Jenin. Soldiers returned fire, wounding the three. They were arrested and taken into medical treatement. Later, one of the militants died from his wounds. [53]
May 29: a Palestinian is shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he tried to stab them in Hebron. Soldier called him to stop and fired warning shots but he kept advancing toward them, drawing a 12-cm dagger. [54]
May 29: Two Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades terrorists were killed in the Gaza Strip after a bomb they made exploded prematurely.[55]
June 7: A day of violence erupts in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. [56]:
It begins with a barrage of three Qassam rockets on Sderot, severely damaging one house. Hamas claimed responsibility.
Israeli soldiers kill senior Islamic Jihad terrorist Marwah Kamil after he fired on troops that attempted to arrest him. The operation took place under heavy fire exchanges, in which another Palestinian gunmen was killed and an IDF officer was wounded from a grenade. An IDF Caterpillar D9 started to demolish Kamil's house after he shot at troops, killing him.
A Qassam rocket hit the Ganey Tal and killed 3 workers: 2 Palestinians and a Chinese citizen. Another 6 workers were wounded. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
A total of 9 Qassam rockets, 5 mortar shells and 5 anti-tank missiles were fired upon Israeli settlements.
June 18: a terrorist attack on Kfar Darom settlement is foiled. Four terrorists from the Fatah and the Islamic Jihad tried to infiltrate into the settlement, but were noticed by IDF soldiers. The soldiers opened fire and killed 1 or 2 terrorists. Earlier in the morning, two Palestinian teenagers were arrested while trying to smuggle weapons. [57].
June 19: One Israeli soldier is killed and 2 construction workers are injured after Palestinian militants fired anti-tank missile at them in the Philadelphi Route. The soldiers returned fire and managed to kill one of the attackers. The Islamic Jihad and the Fatah's Abu-Reish Brigades claimed responsibility. [58]
At the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus, another Palestinian teenager was caught smuggling five pipe bombs in a wooden box. Palestinian sources identified the boy as 16-year-old Khalil Mohammed Hashash. [59]
June 20: One Israeli is killed in a West Bank ambush after Palestinian gunmen shot his car. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. [60], [61]
A Palestinian female suicide bomber was caught in the Erez Crossing, carrying explosives and a detonator in her underwear. She planned to carry out a suicide bombing attack in the Soroka hospital were she received medical treatment and was scheduled for a doctors appointment. The woman was identified as Wafa Samir Ibrahim Bass and said she was sent by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. [62], [63]
June 24: An Israeli teenager, Avichay Levi (17), is killed and four others are injured after a shooting attack from a Palestinian car in Beit Haggai junction south of Hebron. The Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility. [64], [65]
June 26: Avi Mantzur (16), who was critically injured in the June 24 Beit Haggai attack, dies from his wounds. [66]

Rimeligt fredeligt, ikke?

Henrik

Ballade i Kina

Jeg har før berettet om de kamphandlinger der finder sted i Kina fra tid til anden, også om episoden for en måneds penge siden, da 200 lejesvende overfaldt nogle bønder der protesterede mod at der skulle bygges et kraftværk nær deres landsby. Nu er der blevet foretaget 100 arrestationer i sagen:

Preliminary investigations by the police panel indicate that the riot was the work of two contractors, Zhang and Zhen, who are building supporting facilities for a power plant near the village of Shengyou.

On June 11, more than 200 thugs with hunting rifles, clubs, sharpened pipes and other weapons, attacked farmers living in huts on a piece of scrub land near Shengyou in Dingzhou, reports said.

Six farmers and one attacker were killed in the attack, 48 others were injured and hospitalized, eight of whom were in a critical condition, reports said.

Som sådan er dette intet nyt - demonstrationer og optøjer som disse er hverdags-begivenheder i Kina - alene i 2003 fandt 53.000 af den slags sted. Normalt bliver disse bare afskrevet som et produkt af økonomisk ulighed, men en del demografer er begyndt istedet at give kinesiske forældre der aborterer pigebørn skylden. Overskuddet af drengebørn betyder ganske enkelt at konkurrencen om kvinder bliver større, og at de der taber i konkurrencen hovedsageligt vil være de ressource-svage. Dermed forsvinder også den modererende indflydelse som kone og børn har, og disse "bare branches" ("afløvede grene"- vrede, unge mænd uden familie) forsøger at samle sig ressourcer nok til alligevel at få sig en mage. Dette sker for mange vedkommende via kriminalitet eller - som i eksemplet foroven - ved at udøve vold mod penge. De skaber uro.

Denne uro kan blive så stærk at den enten gives udtryk som interne oprør (Nien-oprøret i Kina i 1800-tallet, feks), eller som en periode af ekspansion (Portugal i middelalderen, feks). Begge eksempler behandles i en artikel jeg faldt over om emnet, og udtrykker det således:

Young males participate in collective aggression to acquire the resources needed to attract a mate, and we should expect a great majority of the militants to come from that section of the population with fewest resources.... It is likely then that controlling elites astutely underwrite such risky undertakings as territorial expansion or colonization, especially when the alternative is having the aggressive tendencies of the male citizens directed at themselves.... Tentatively, we would like to propose that this intergenerational competition for reproductive resources, when exacerbated by the presence of a relatively large number of resourceless young males, might result in the emergence of male collective aggression, which occasionally expresses itself as expansionist warfare.... The presence of a relatively large number of young men makes coalitional aggression more probable, particularly when resources needed to attract a mate are insufficiently available or poorly distributed

Langt de fleste af disse "Bare branches" ender i kinas såkaldte "flydende befolkning" af migrant-arbejdere, der udgør mellem 100 og 150 millioner, og indtil videre er blevet opsuget af den voksende økonomi i kinas kystområder.

Problemerne begynder først rigtigt, når den kinesiske økonomi begynder at gå nedad, og de hundrede millioner begynder at blive arbejdsløse.

Henrik

Tålmodighed og mord på uskyldige

Arnold Kling har et udmærket indlæg på Tech Central Station, om behovet for ikke bare at slå terrorister ihjel, men også at skille dem fra de mere normale muslimer:

It is possible that the culture of the world Muslim community, including its religious and secular institutions, simply is not yet equipped to confront the radicals in the way that Thomas Friedman and the rest of us might wish. A lack of social capital, or what James Bennett calls "civil society," means that the Muslim community's circuits are overloaded. Like the Native Americans living in Montana in 1870, Muslims are confronted with too much change happening too quickly.

We live in a "can-do" society. If a terrorist group arose from within Western culture, after one or two atrocities it would be strangled by a myriad of networks, community organizations, and political entities capable of enforcing group norms.

Her bør det indskydes at gruppe-normerne ikke nødvendigvis er mod terror. Diverse meningsmålinger blandt palæstinensere har feks vist udbredt støtte for terrorisme, og indtil terrorangrebene begyndte at ramme dem selv har meningsmålinger i Saudi Arabien vist udbredt støtte til Osama bin Laden og hans serie-myrderi på uskyldige.

Perhaps Muslim society cannot address radical terrorism with its existing institutional base. If so, then it will take time for new organizations to emerge within the Muslim world that are capable of effectively promulgating and enforcing prohibitions against terrorism.

I am not trying to absolve moderate Muslims, and moderate Muslim leaders, of responsibility for helping to end the barbaric gestures of terrorism. I agree with Friedman that in the end the only humane way to end the war between the West and radical Islam is for moderate Muslims to exercise better leadership. However, the approach that I would favor with moderate Muslims is high expectations rather than ultimatums.

We should not be tolerant or passive in response to terrorism. We should continue to pursue, incarcerate, and kill terrorists -- without apologies or mindless insinuations. As to the Muslims who are not active terrorists, we should be particularly hard on those who voice moderation in Western-style press conferences but who preach hatred when they think that no one from the West is watching.

However, we should not rush to declare that the moderates' cause is hopeless. Their task may be more difficult than we can appreciate. If we are to avoid turning our clash with radical Muslims into a re-run of 1870, we will need patience.

Det er så det valg, vi står med nu: være tålmodige mens uskyldige bliver slagtet i gaderne og vi venter på om moderate muslimer bekvemmer sig til at stoppe den terror der har rod i deres hjemlande, eller spille efter Hama-regler.

Henrik