Bad joke
Others have mentioned this already, Southknoxbubba and Josh Marshall among them. David Corn of The Nation was there, and writes about this Bush "joke" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner:

But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, 'Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.'

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. 'Nope,' he said. 'No weapons over there.' More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: 'Maybe under here.' Laughter again.

Not the kind of thing a president should joke about: a missing reason -- the missing main reason -- to start a war. This was breathtakingly arrogant and feckless. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:44:00 PM -- |    

 
"Who won the elections?"
In December 2003, two Norwegian researchers, Brynjar Lia and Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt, FFI) found a 42 page document on the Internet titled "Jihadi Iraq, Hopes and Dangers" (Arabic, PDF). They now argue that it "served as ideological inspiration and policy guidance for the terrorist attacks in Madrid", quoting the anonymous author:

...It is necessary to make utmost use of the upcoming general election in Spain in March next year.

We think that the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three blows, after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure. If its troops still remain in Iraq after these blows, then the victory of the Socialist Party is almost secured, and the withdrawal of the Spanish forces will be on its electoral programme.
(via a Bjorn Staerk 3/24/04 quicklink; emphasis and underlining from the Arabic original)

Beyond the obvious fact that the Madrid bombers did as the document proposed, Lia and Hegghammer point out that the "nom de terror" chosen by an alleged Al Qaeda video spokesman after the attack -- Abu Dujana, a warrior and contemporary of Mohammed -- matches one mentioned in the "Hopes and Dangers" document.

The authors see a more pragmatic, cool variety of Islamist in the pages of this document. Yassin Musharbath, writing for the German weekly SPIEGEL, agrees:

The message is clear: the jihadists should spend their resources carefully, not at random.[...]
The Jihad handbook of December 2003, whose authenticity is much more certain* and which was probably written in the summer of 2003, is very different from most of the Al Qaeda publications seen until now. For one, it's less nuts and bolts than the pure bombmaking manuals out of the Afghan training camps, but simultaneously much more intellectual and analytical than the usual propaganda material. [...]

In any case it's an example of the professionalization of Al Qaeda in military tactics. The mujaheddin are reminded again and again in the text not to act spontaneously and rashly: the authors send their pupils off with "Preparation and planning are the foundations for success of every project," the authors remind their pupils. "Only that guarantees (...) great capability, shortens the (required) time and removes the confrontation with danger."
(via A Fistful of Euros)

The behavior of an alleged ringleader of the Madrid attacks bears out that this is not your 1990s Al Qaeda any more. A cell phone on an unexploded bomb led Spanish police to Jamal Zougam within a day of the bombings. The next time he was seen in public, he wasn't declaiming "God is great" or "Death to the crusaders." As the New York Times reports:

When Mr. Zougam arrived in court after five days incommunicado, he reportedly asked the clerks, "Who won the elections?"
(via Regnum Crucis)

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*EDIT, 3/27: The comparison is with a message purportedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi and released before the election, in which he comments on the Spanish government's theory that ETA was responsible for the bombing.
UPDATE, 8/4: A New Yorker article pulls together this and other aspects of the 3/11 attacks.



Take away the dumb ones and the rest look smarter
SPIEGEL author Musharbash calls the new Al Qaeda a "learning organization." But it could be simpler than that: for all its haphazardness -- the "unconnected dots" before 9/11, the Great Tora Bora Escape -- the war on terror may have exerted some strong selection pressure on terrorists. That is to say, despite it all, maybe a lot of the gung-ho hothead types are dead or in custody by now. True, that would still leave the colder, smarter, more cunning ones. But it would also still leave them on the run.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:21:00 PM -- |    

 
Robert Mugabe: child abuser, rape and torture trainer
I don't ordinarily quote a report in its entirety. I hope the BBC won't mind. If you see a picture of Mugabe to the right, I've just ripped off a little more of the government of Zimbabwe's bandwidth. I'd be pleased if they did mind. (It might be fun to see if more blogger-mosquito bites like this annoyed them.)

February 27, 2004: BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Zimbabwe's torture training camps, Hilary Andersson:

President Robert Mugabe's government has set up secret camps across the country in which thousands of youths are taught how to torture and kill, the BBC has learned.

The Zimbabwean government says the camps are job training centres, but those who have escaped say they are part of a brutal plan to keep Mugabe in power.

Former recruits to the camps have spoken to the BBC's Panorama programme about a horrific training programme that breaks young teenagers down before encouraging them to commit atrocities.

Members of the youth militia are warned never to tell of their experiences inside the camps, and many refuse to be identified when talking about their experiences.

However one girl, Debbie, claims she was kidnapped and forced into a camp - where she was raped on her very first night.

In accounts gathered by BBC Panorama from dozens of youths, it appears that for many of them the training in the camps begins with rape.

Debbie said she was raped three times on the first night, but claimed that the abuse didn't stop then.

She told the programme: "I was raped again at night and they said no-one can complain because its part of training."

She claims she used to share a blanket with an 11-year-old girl. The little girl was also raped night after night.

President Mugabe has visited the camps. Ministry insiders have told Panorama that his government knows what goes on inside them.

Food is often scarce. Youths are beaten until they succumb to orders. They are taught that their mission is to keep President Mugabe in power.

Panorama has also learned that some of the recruits are taught to torture his opponents.

Daniel was plied with alcohol and drugs, and learned how to electrocute his victims.

He said: "I would just touch, krr, krr - tell us information."

Asked if he thought it was OK to torture people, he added that it was "nice", because "your mind is disturbed".

During covert filming inside Zimbabwe, Panorama also spoke to a camp commander who told the programme that youths in his camp had been sent to kill opponents of President Mugabe.

He said: "In the area I am covering I heard of two. My superiors instructed that the people must be eliminated."

What is more frightening is that President Mugabe now wants every Zimbabwean youth to undergo training. We have been told they will be used to intimidate political opponents in next year's elections.

The commander added: "These guys are going to be used by the ruling party to keep the opposition out of power."

We put these allegations to Zimbabwe's government, but so far it has refused to respond. (emphases added; BBC link via the German blog "Nornirs Aett." )

The world would be a better place without this guy; meanwhile, Mugabe and his regime should be shunned. Anyone who so much as gives them the time of day should be shunned as well.

Prior items on this blog about Zimbabwe under Mugabe:

05/13/2003: Political correctness in Zimbabwe: bloody and real

05/31/2003: Zimbabwe threatens planned opposition demonstrations (e-mail links)

06/09/2003: I am getting younger, and I still can punch

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UPDATE, 2/22/05: new image of Mugabe via Zimbabwe government servers replaces old one, currently a 404 not found. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:03:00 PM -- |    

 
Another proud day for the Fatah Tanzim Brigade
It turns out there was something odd about the Palestinian boy with the bomb belt the Israelis caught the other day. No, not that he seemed to be a kid -- that's old hat. What's different this time is that the suicide bomber recruit has Downs syndrome. The German newsweekly SPIEGEL summarizes:

An Israeli officer, Lieutenant Tamir Milrad, told a Haaretz reporter: "The boy told us he didn't want to die, he didn't want to blow up." He said he wanted to be a "hero." His dispatchers were said to have promised him that he would have sex in heaven with 70 virgins.*

The 16-year old has Downs syndrome, a Palestinian witness said according to** the DPA agency. He was known to many in Nablus... Haaretz and AP also report that the boy's family describe him as mentally very slow. His brother is to have said: "He doesn't know a thing." [...]

According to Haaretz the Fatah Tanzim Brigade of the Balata refugee camp has acknowledged sending the boy off with the explosives. (via New Joerg Times; links added)

It may be pointless to make distinctions among them, but Fatah Tanzim hereby takes the prize as "most utterly morally bankrupt" Palestinian terror group. ("Just wait till next week!" cries the competition.)

Minor quibble: SPIEGEL runs the story under the uninformative headline "Israelische Armee fasst 16-Jährigen mit Bombengürtel" -- "Israeli army catches 16-year old with bomb belt." The 'mentally challenged' part makes the summary paragraph below the headline, but still...


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* Islamist lunatics will be relieved to know the boy was promised the usual 72 virgins, according to the Ha'aretz report.
**The link leads to the German newspaper Handelsblatt: username "newsrack," password "123"


Postscript: Brother furious
From the Jerusalem Post: "The would-be bomber's brother Hosni Abdu said he was furious with whomever persuaded his brother to become a suicide bomber. "The ones who sent him are stupid, because the army will give him two slaps and he will tell them who sent him," he said.

Keep an eye on that one, he's got the right stuff. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:54:00 PM -- |    

 
Condolences
...to Diana Moon. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:29:00 AM -- |    

 
A Court in deeper trouble than I had imagined
There's a reason "Justice" is depicted wearing a blindfold. It's not that we necessarily suspect she would tip the scales if she saw them. It's that she knows -- or ought to know -- that's the clearest way to assure us she can't.

It seemed open and shut to me that someone on close enough terms with a defendant to join him on a duck hunt weekend was automatically incapable of providing the appearance of impartial justice in a case about that defendant. It seems open and shut to me that a justice who vehemently argues otherwise is unlikely to provide the substance of impartial justice, either.

This weekend, Adam Liptak of the New York Times arranged an entertaining "fisking," by a number of legal experts, of Justice Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from the Cheney vs. U.S. District Court case (Scalia's Defense: A Case of Blind Justice Among a Bunch of Friends). Some excerpts:

[Scalia:] Our flight down cost the government nothing, since space-available was the condition of our invitation. And, though our flight down on the vice president's plane was indeed free, since we were not returning with him we purchased (because they were least expensive) round-trip tickets that cost precisely what we would have paid if we had gone both down and back on commercial flights. In other words, none of us saved a cent by flying on the vice president's plane.

Lubet: That answers the question of whether this was a gift. It wasn't a gift.

Gillers: We would all like to pay coach and fly on Air Force Two. It is simply disingenuous to say this is about money. It's about luxury and status. He got those things from a litigant with a case before the court.

Advantage: Gillers. I'd add that the flight itself was bound to offer just the kind of "intimate setting" Scalia protests was not available at the duck hunt -- and that I'm unlikely to ever know what Scalia and Cheney discussed on that flight.

[Scalia:] There are, I am sure, those who believe that my friendship with persons in the current administration might cause me to favor the government in cases brought against it. That is not the issue here. Nor is the issue whether personal friendship with the vice president might cause me to favor the government in cases in which he is named. None of those suspicions regarding my impartiality (erroneous suspicions, I hasten to protest) bears upon recusal here.

The question, simply put, is whether someone who thought I could decide this case impartially despite my friendship with the vice president would reasonably believe that I cannot decide it impartially because I went hunting with that friend and accepted an invitation to fly there with him on a government plane. If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.

Freedman: After earlier stating it correctly, he misstates the legal standard here. The statute says not "would" but "might" and not "cannot decide it impartially" but whether "his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

In other words, wondering whether his contact and friendship with a defendant might influence his decision in a case is precisely the issue here.

Brett Marston contrasts Scalia's sudden disdain for the political consequences and appearances of his decisions with the overweening concern he once showed for "clouds cast" by the state of Florida's courts on the 2000 presidential election:

Scalia just told us yesterday that the political branches can weather the assaults of the press and resulting public doubts (see above). So, again, why was it proper for the Supreme Court to worry about political consequences to George Bush -- especially when there were alternate, established procedures for dealing with the precise kind of controversy at issue? Recall that Congress -- not the Court -- is explicitly charged with the responsibility of determining the validity of slates of electors.

As E. J. Dionne asks in today's Washington Post, "...does [Scalia] belong on a court where he has to pretend to believe in deciding cases on the merits? If he can't see why his behavior in this case raises such serious doubts in the minds of his adversaries, what else is he missing?"

I think Scalia is overrated as a thinker, I think he confuses independence with arrogance, and I think he is a danger to the Court. On the heels of Locke v. Davey, I'm coming to the conclusion that Justice Scalia (1) all but defines his career by adopting positions few other judges would have the gall or stupidity to defend, and is (2) generally and predictably motivated by adherence to his political principles, not the legal ones we've hired him to think about.

This can't be just about Scalia, though. It was idiotic to give Justice Scalia the right to decide whether to recuse himself. This should have been decided by some or all of the other Supreme Court justices. I'm no lawyer: maybe that's not customary -- yet. Maybe that's too humiliating for this Court to enjoy contemplating. Good; I hope it's forced on them at the first opportunity. Between this and Bush v. Gore, this Supreme Court has all but forfeited the trust average American citizens place in it as a place where the law is paramount -- not politics or social connections.

For now, though, the Scalian Supreme Court motto seems to be: "Blindfolds? We don't need no stinkin' blindfolds." posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:53:00 PM -- |    

 
Progress on paper trail for Maryland electronic voting
TrueVoteMD.org, teaming with Ben (& Jerry) Cohen's TrueMajority.org, has scored a victory towards getting paper receipts for electronic votes in Maryland. Steven Dennis of the local newspaper The Gazette reported on Friday:

Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, chairwoman of the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, told The Gazette that she supports the paper mandate and wants the machines upgraded in time for this November's general election.

Hollinger (D-Dist. 11) of Pikesville said the committee will amend the bill today to ask Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) to find money in the budget for the upgrade, which legislative analysts warned could cost tens of millions.

Especially if they let Diebold, the voting machine system maker, "charge out the yin yang" for any upgrades, as a Diebold employee recommended in an e-mail obtained by The Gazette last year.

The TrueVoteMD group got attention earlier last week with an advertisement in the Baltimore Sun captioned "Sheila Hixson and Paula Hollinger have the power to protect Marylanders from a dangerous voting machine", and urging Marylanders to "tell Delegate Hixson and Senator Hollinger to require a paper trail to safeguard America's voters."

For my part, I urge all readers to go to a Ben and Jerry's as soon as possible and consume a large ice cream treat of their choice.


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UPDATE, 3/24: After you eat your ice cream, you might also want to donate to the TrueMajority.org "computer ate my vote" campaign. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:52:00 AM -- |    

 
Villepin on the roots of terrorism
Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, of the German newsweekly Die Zeit, provides a succinct critique of the EU foreign policy response to 3/11 (Warum erst jetzt? -- "Why just now?"). He's particularly hard on a comment French foreign minister Dominique Villepin made on Monday:

... And third, so the Frenchman, one must address the causes of terror, the frustration, anger, and hate that were the breeding ground of violence.

Fritz-Vannahme replies:

But does the dangerous mixture of dictatorship and demography, oil payments and social misery really work as an explanation of terror? Osama bin Laden, for instance, controls a forturne of around $300 million, if one may believe the findings of Spanish anti-terror judge Garzon. His billionaire family once paid him off when their relative's activities became embarrassing. The killers of New York and Washington enjoyed the privilege of a higher education at western universities. Impoverishment? Certainly, but only in the hearts and minds of these murderers. That's why heads of state meeting at the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday houldn't listen to their foreign ministers, and should strike Point Three from their explanations for terrorism as quickly as possible.

That depends.

I basically agree with Fritz-Vannahme here. On the other hand, if Villepin was talking about the banlieues -- French Arab ghettos -- in France and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, he may have a fair point: the bulk of anti-Jewish hate crimes in France are carried out by French Muslims, and a number of notorious terrorists hail from these neighborhoods. I have a hunch that's not what Dominique meant, though.


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TRANSLATION NOTES: breeding ground: Naehrboden; impoverishment: Verelendung
EDIT, 3/23: I don't usually do this: I changed the title and took out a bit of scripture I didn't have any business using here. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Susan Lindauer update
Susan Lindauer is the Takoma Park resident recently indicted on charges of serving as an unregistered foreign agent -- a "spy" by some readings of the charge. Sean Sands of The Gazette (a local Maryland newspaper group) interviewed her last Friday. Excerpts:

Everything I did worked to implement the priorities identified by our own government," Lindauer told The Gazette. "I didn't create the priorities -- they created the priorities. I wasn't giving speeches on the Senate floor -- they were giving the speeches on the Senate floor.

"I was the one taking their speeches seriously enough to try to listen and do something about it." [...]

At no time, she asserted, did she spy on the United States, nor did she have access to information that could have jeopardized national security. She also denied being in the employ of Mukhabbarat operatives. [...]

She said she met her alleged co-conspirators, Raed Noman al-Anbuke and Wisam Noman al-Anbuke, for the first time in court in Manhattan on Monday. [...]

Sands didn't press Lindauer about the aspect of the case that interests me the most -- Lindauer's alleged efforts to support resistance groups in Iraq after the war, and the FBI's apparent efforts to coax her to do so.


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EDIT, 6/26/06: link to Gazette article fixed. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:37:00 AM -- |    

 
Do something for Iraq
The English blog Harry's Place is running a "Do something for Iraq" event acquainting readers with worthwhile causes they can help support to help Iraq. Click the "Do something" link for the complete list. Harry explains:

From today until Monday we will be providing links to campaigns, projects and charities that are directly helping Iraqi people - either in material terms or other forms of solidarity aimed at assisting the strengthening of democracy, civil society and human rights.

Our four day campaign is called Do Something For Iraq and we are urging all our readers to follow the links that will be provided in the coming days and choose at least one campaign or cause to support. We also welcome your suggestions of what we should be linking to - please send your ideas via email (on the top left corner 'Dear Harry').

Some of the links will be to charities that are doing good work that needs supporting financially - its time to put our money where our mouths are.

Herewith a partial summary:

Libraries: Help rebuild the library infrastructure of Iraq, an initiative of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (via Norm Geras). The initiative is particularly interested in getting books about science and medicine.

Schools: "This site is dedicated to helping people gather and send school supplies to the children of Iraq."

Marsh Arabs: Saddam persecuted them and destroyed the marshland ecosystem that sheltered and sustained them. The AMAR (Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees) International Charitable Foundation needs donations to help a people survive and rebuild.

Bloggers: Iraqi bloggers are doing yeoman work providing grass roots perspectives on the real situation in Iraq. Many of them could use a donation.

Remembering:

The Iraq Memory Foundation has no “higher” purpose than to place the Iraqi experience of suffering and oppression, between 1968 and 2003, in the global context of the history of pain and suffering. It seeks to do this by filming and archiving the individual stories of many thousands of survivors and witnesses of atrocity. And it seeks to digitize, index and classify the totality of the documents recovered from the outgoing regime that deal with Iraqi pain and suffering.

Here's a page with links to Baathist Iraq official documents, including a professional rapist's ID card, and a registry of Kurd villages eliminated at the beginning of the 1987-1989 Anfal Kurdish genocide (or mere war crime wave, if you insist), listed in an elaborately decorated notebook. It's important that these historical documents are preserved and disseminated. Get details about donating here; the organization is applying for 501(c)3 tax-deductible status.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:13:00 PM -- |    

 
Nephew's Metatheory of Scientific Theories
Offhand, I'd say that when a scientific theory must be defended from its critics by threats to sue their publishers for defamation, then that theory is likely to be hogwash. (Via Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:09:00 AM -- |