Tag Archives: Terrorism

Beslan, Pt. 2

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Beslan looks to shake Russia in a way that the Nord-Ost siege did not, in a way that the subway and concert and bus stop bombings did not, and in a way that the plane bombings would not have. But before I speculate on any of those things, I want to lay down a marker, a basic point of reference, one that is completely expected but ought to be said anyway.

Targeting a school for an attack is vile. It is more vile than attacking a whole population center, knowing that schools will fall under attack as well. It is worse than random terror, worse than anything else that the Chechens have done, and worse than anything that I can recall that al-Qaeda has done or been accused of.

Certainly there is no shortage of atrocities in this world, but specifically targeting children warrants a special place in the inferno.

Beslan, Pt. 1

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Just got back from a week in Russia, which was interesting timing indeed. A bomb at the Riga train station the day I arrived. The battle and massacre in Beslan just days before I left.

I’ll have more to say tomorrow, but I wanted to ask if anyone among our readers can find a link to the front page of this Sunday’s Izvestiya (September 5). It was a full-page photograph of a man carrying an injured or dead girl from the wreckage of the school. A beautiful, heartbreaking photo, a modern piet? as sorrowful as anything the Renaissance gave us.

It also got the paper’s editor-in-chief fired by the Kremlin.

Update: Many thanks to reader Michael S. who pointed me to the paper’s pdf archive. The picture is here, and the rest of the day’s powerful edition is here. Don’t miss page 12.

Suspicion and divided loyalties

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Perhaps the most damaging effect of 9/11 and all that has followed will be its role in making divided loyalties one of the most dangerous things a person can have. From the beginning, while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still burning, any effort to hold non-trivial positions about terrorism and Islam were attacked. People opposed to the war in Iraq were branded as terrorist supporters, people unimpressed by a programme of reform in the Middle East imposed at the end of a gun were castigated, people who asked questions about whether there was more to things than “they hate us for our freedom” were branded as traitors.

Tariq Ramadan wrote a piece in Wednesday’s New York Times which must be read in this light. The key paragraph – the statement of where he stands – appears at the end:

I believe Western Muslims can make a critical difference in the Muslim majority world. To do this, we must become full, independent Western citizens, working with others to address social, economic and political problems. However, we can succeed only if Westerners do not cast doubt on our loyalty every time we criticize Western governments. Not only do our independent voices enrich Western societies, they are the only way for Western Muslims to be credible in Arab and Islamic countries so that we can help bring about freedom and democracy. That is the message I advocate. I do not understand how it can be judged as a threat to America.

But it is not that hard to see the threat in it. To encourage western Muslims to at once see themselves as having a place in the West and a role in the Islamic world is tantamount to asking them to divide their loyalties. To all too many people right now, divided loyalties are a synonym for treason. The charge of divided loyalties is an old one, and a very damaging one. It was once the most mainstream charge that people made against Jews. To see it revived today – against Muslims in Europe, against Mexicans in the US by the likes of Samuel Huntington, and yes, against Jews in many countries – is very, very troubling.
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Russian troops storm school

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About an hour and a half ago from the look of it.

The assault did not appear to be planned, but rather began with scattered fire that quickly erupted to a crescendo, punctuated by more blasts. Dozens of hostages — many barely dressed, their faces strained with fear and exhaustion – survived the assault, but others emerged bloodied and in shock. The fate of the majority inside — now believed to be as many as 1,000 — was not immediately known.

NY Times

Update: What Interfax is reporting is not a pretty picture. Unplanned raid, over 200 wounded, surviving terrorists hiding out in an adjacent building.

Daniel Pipes on Tariq Ramadan: Why French literacy still matters

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Readers of my previous comment on Tariq Ramadan will no doubt have come away with the impression that I don’t much like Daniel Pipes. This is not an entirely accurate assessment of my opinon of him. I think Pipes is an unreconstructed bigot and xenophobic fanatic whose academic work fails to meet even the lowest standards of scholarship, whose career has been built on politically driven attacks, and who has set up with his “Campus Watch” as a terrorist front designed to intimidate academics and ensure that there is as little debate, discussion or rational thought on Israel, US foreign policy or Islam as possible. His reseach and scholarship are not intended to better inform action but to support specific agendas, usually revolving around hating some foreign force or people. Instead of fostering debate, his work is intended to intimidate. Pipes advocates religiously targetted surveillance, he supports making federal university funding conditional on ideology, and he has helped to terrorise professors who are named on his website. In short, I think Pipes is swine.

He is a second generation right-wing tool, the son of one of the men most responsible for America’s “Team B”, which grossly overblew the Soviet menace in the 70s and 80s – causing massive US defense spending and resulting deficits – and complained that anyone with a better sense of reality was soft on communism. Normally, Pipes’ parentage would constitute poor grounds for condeming him as having a pathological relationship to facts. But keep this in mind, since it constitutes one of his arguments against Ramadan.

All you need is Google to find out why I think these things about Daniel Pipes. It’s not a lot of work. His own website provides ample examples.

But, today, I will be targeting something a little more specific. Pipes has put up on his website his comment on Tariq Ramadan’s visa denial, originally published in the New York Post on Friday. In it, he makes specific points against Tariq Ramadan, linking, in some cases, to articles on the web in support. These articles are primarily in French. As a service to our non-francophone readers, we will be translating the relevant sections, since they lead one to the conclusion that Pipes assumes his readers will just take his word on their contents.

We report, you decide.
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How Spain voted

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Both Chris Brooke and Matthew Turner have raised the suggestion that the Socialist victory in Spain may not have been caused by an actual swing in the electorate from the Popular Party (PP) to the Socialists (PSOE) after Thursday, but rather by the attacks in Madrid inspiring more people to go out and vote. With the majority of these new voters trending towards the left and the PSOE, the argument goes, this meant that they can attribute their victory to these new voters, rather than voters who switched from the PP to the PSOE.

Curious about whether or not this is true, I took a look at the actual election results and there is evidence there to support this view. However, any conclusions from this evidence are necessarily tentative and speculative, as the evidence could be interpreted many ways.
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Six Moroccans Identified in Madrid Bombing

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Well, little by little the details are getting clearer. According to the Spanish daily El Pais the police now know the identity of six Moroccans who are thought to have participated in Thursday’s bombing.

According to the newspaper one of those responsible is Jamal Zougan from Tangiers who has been identified from photographs by two passengers from one of the bombed trains. These passengers have also identified two more people who accompanied Zougan that day. These latter two are thought by police to have been combatants in Chechenia and Bosnia. Zougan also shared a flat at one time with Abdelaziz Benyaich who is under preventive detention in Spain for his presumed association with the bombing of a Spanish cultural centre in Casablanca last year.

Oh, what a tangled web they weave!
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Fair and Balanced?

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Two versions of the Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero story, Fox and Bloomberg, choose for yourselves.

BTW: anyone out there help me: what is the Blair/Labour Government official position right now on the UN and troop withdrawal? Just to put this in some sort of perspective.
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