A few months back, I picked up, on a lark, a short French novel called Allah Superstar authored by the pseudonymous Y.B. (generally known to be Yassir Benmiloud, columnist for the Algerian daily El Watan). I bought it entirely on the basis of the excerpt on the back cover:
Une fatwa, voilà ce qu’il [...]

As regards his more general attitude to the war, you must not rely too much on those feelings of hatred which the humans are so fond of discussing in Christian, or anti-Christian, periodicals. In his anguish, the patient can, of course, be encouraged to revenge himself by some vindictive feelings directed towards the German leaders, [...]

Well a consensus seems to have been reached that some at least of the bombers were ’suicides’ (the probability seems to be that they all were). So what do we know about suicide bombing? Well reading around I came across this document from the Rand Corporation which contains a chapter from terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman [...]

This is not an analytical “perspectives” type post. Just a number of bitty threads that seem in one way or another worth noting (small pieces loosely joined). They could basically be grouped together under the following headings: photos, suicides, explosives and origins.
Maybe I should also point out the obvious: that living in Spain while [...]

This news needs careful watching:
Spanish police arrested 16 suspected Islamist militants on Wednesday, including followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and men preparing to become suicide bombers in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said. t was the second European swoop in two days against suspected backers of the Iraqi insurgency, following Germany’s arrest of three Iraqis on [...]

Michael Mandel had an interesting take on the US trade deficit in Business Week earlier this month (btw: he also has a weblog).
His opinion is that the US trade deficit isn’t as big a deal as people often think. One of the reasons: that the ongoing import of human capital into the US (which of [...]