AN AL QAEDA / MCVEIGH CONNECTION? That’s what this item at The Corner suggests. It certainly bears further inquiry.

UPDATE: Wow — look at these pictures.

THERE’S THE SPIRIT: A French “anti-racism” group is criticizing Oriana Fallaci over her latest book, which suggests that radical Islam is a threat to freedom. She’s responding by threatening to sue them for calling her racist. Bravo.

I’d like to know more about the “Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between People” that’s after her. Who are they?

UPDATE: Reader Zach Barbera sends this link to a story about their involvement in the effort to censor Nazi material from eBay. He says that’s a sign that they’re not all bad. I would disagree. It’s better to be a nonpartisan censor than a partisan one (of the sort we find on many college campuses) but it’s better not to be a censor at all.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Neal Dodd emails from France with this information:

The MRAP seem to have been keeping interesting company in that link you posted to the Unesco site: I noticed that they had been working with Thierry Meyssan, of the Reseau Voltaire. You might remember Meyssan as the writer of that ludicrous tract claiming that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th.

There are a few interesting stories on MRAP’s home page: – although it doesn’t seem to have been updated for a few weeks.

While they have a history of fighting anti-Semitism, today they fall very firmly on the Palestinian side; Back in December, they claim that their offices were attacked and their staff threatened by “fascistes pro-israéliens”. That said, they do attempt a certain balance by condemning violence on both sides – their president was interviewed in the leftish daily L’Humanitie recently, and condemned the attacks on synagogues in France, stating that “racism is never the answer”. While he does link the attacks to events in the Middle East, he at least admits that they are racist.

Well, that’s something, I suppose.

EUGENE VOLOKH HAS SOME TENTATIVE THOUGHTS on the imprisonment of the “dirtybomber.” Well worth reading.

MORE AL QAEDA ARRESTS IN MOROCCO. Say, did you notice that there are Saudis involved?

Meanwhile a reader points out:

On a more hopeful note, Mujahir has all the hallmarks of being a moron–waving pistols around over a traffic dispute, juvie hall, gang affiliation, county lockup. Like that character in “Snowcrash”, he might as well have “POOR IMPULSE CONTROL” tatooed on his forehead. If this is their top-flight American agent we’re not doing badly.

Yeah, topflight human resources aren’t their strength. But persistence and a willingness to learn from mistakes will take you a long way.

And the “Snowcrash” reference is way cool.

EVEN ROBERT SCHEER is writing off Arafat:

Arafat has failed the ultimate test of a revolutionary leader, which is to take his people past the stage of violence to that of self-governance. He has lacked the integrity to challenge the desperation and temporary effectiveness of suicide bombings–tactics that are ultimately suicidal not only for the individual but for the cause of Palestinian statehood. He has failed to encourage the committed and talented youth of Palestine to become honest administrators, tough negotiators and brave truth-tellers, and instead has sent them off to die as mute bomb-bearers.

Facing such a dominant army, those who are stateless can only win by proving their case in the court of world opinion. By embracing the self-immolation of his own people as their most reliable weapon, Arafat has failed miserably to do this. By surrendering to the agenda of the religious fanatics who have long opposed him, as well as the more secular crazies within his own political coalition, Arafat has sabotaged the hopes of moderate Israelis and Palestinians and those who support them abroad.

Rebellion has a long, proud history, in our country and elsewhere, when fueled by the desire of regular citizens to pursue a normal life without abuse and threat.

A rebellion that feeds on the allure of martyrdom and the sacrifice of children, however, can find its end only in more pain and darkness.

It’s Scheer, of course, so he still manages to blame the Israeli electorate for having “turned its back” on Barak, and to blame Bush for having “long ignored” (I guess that would be 8 months “long”) the plight of Palestinians. But such blame doesn’t mean much, given that Barak had the poor judgment to trust a man who no longer enjoys the support even of Robert Scheer. If Scheer wants to blame Bush, he should blame him for still taking Arafat seriously, when even the Robert Scheers of the world know better now.

ANOTHER TERRORIST BOMBING in Israel. I hope the victims sue the European Union.

THE ONTARIO CLEAN AIR ALLIANCE, which the Globe and Mail describes as a “major Ontario environmental group,” has released a report pointing out the clean-air benefits of nuclear power.

It’s greenhouse-friendly, too!

ZUBAYDAH’S PROTEGE: According to this report, “dirtybomber” Al Mujahir was captured Al Qaeda leader Zubaydah’s protege. This supports the notion that Zubaydah is actually producing useful intelligence.

BETTER THAN NOTHING, BUT NOT BY MUCH: The EU’s “suspension” of funding to the Palestinian Authority, because of the PA’s diversion of that money to support terrorist acts, is likely to last only until June 19 according to this report.

What possible assurance could the EU receive by then that its money isn’t supporting terrorism? Especially in light of this poll indicating that Palestinians don’t want independence but the elimination of Israel?

UPDATE: On the good news side, the EU is reportedly expanding its list of terror groups to include Hezbollah, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These groups are subject to asset freezes, etc.

TAPPED is right to worry about civil liberties. I stand by my prediction from September 14th, which the new Homeland Security reorganization seems to be vindicating:

I have no doubt, even as I write this, that longstanding bureaucratic wish lists are being transformed into “essential” anti-terrorist precautions. I also have no doubt that most of them won’t do any more good than the dumb “are you a terrorist?” questions immigration officials have been asking embarking passengers for years. . . .

“Increased security measures” don’t stop terrorists, except for the occasional bumbling amateur. To put it bluntly, bullets stop terrorists. Terrorists do what they do because it works: it spreads terror, it inconveniences and disrupts societies, and it leads to the adoption of cumbersome security measures that increase the inconvenience and disruption and burden law enforcement and antiterrorist forces with so many pointless tasks that they’re actually less effective against future terrorism. If terrorism doesn’t work, if the consequences are serious and the payoffs small, then terrorism will stop.

Despite the wish lists of bureaucrats, let’s remember who the real enemy is. And let’s take the war to him, not to the American people.

This said, I think that those who have cried wolf over unimportant issues (like the allegedly-dreadful conditions at the Club Med-like Guantanamo Bay prison camp) have done a lot of harm, by making it harder for those who point out real problems to be taken seriously.

STRATEGYPAGE has two excellent articles today. The first is on Grand Strategy for the War on Terrorism:

The only feasible means of protecting America’s homeland from foreign terrorist attack is to eliminate all terrorist-supporting states. We opposed some foreign terrorism before 9/11, but weren’t at “war” with terrorism in general. 9/11 forced us to recognize that most foreign terrorists and their state sponsors cooperate to a greater or lesser degree, and that our security requires rooting out what has grown into a connected system of world terrorism and the state sponsors of its disparate parts.

President Bush indicated in a recent speech that all governments which continue to use terrorism as instruments of state policy, if only to deflect their own people’s anger away from themselves towards us, will be forcibly replaced. He did not, however, mention what will happen when replacing a government won’t improve the situation, which will usually be the case with failed/failing states.

Their fate will be extinction. I.e., failed and failing states which have served as terrorist sanctuaries will be conquered and occupied by a friendly country (us if necessary) with the means and ruthlessness to root out terrorist infrastructure.

This is a fundamental change in the post World War II order. Borders will change and whole countries cease to exist. The world will be rearranged to further our domestic security, and we will act preemptively rather than waiting for attack. These are logical and necessary implications of America’s new policy, i.e., we’ll get there eventually despite claiming the contrary now.

It’s a bit hard in places to tell which parts are descriptive of the Bush strategy and which are prescriptive, but it’s all worth reading. This article on terrorist radiological weapons is also useful and troubling.

WALTER OLSON reports that they’re trying to ban Oriana Fallaci’s new book in France for “Islamophobia,” (a term used in this nasty review in (where else) The Guardian). Apparently it’s evil to point out that people are trying to destroy the culture of openness and freedom, since it might encourage someone to want to do something to defend it. This is what hate-speech laws do — punish people who point out the haters, while leaving the haters untouched.

UPDATE: Do you think they regard Oriana Fallaci as a “premature anti-Islamofascist?”

HERE’S A LINK (courtesy of the indispensable Charles Johnson) to streaming audio of a Charles Krauthammer speech on “Oslo Messianism” that’s getting rave reviews. I haven’t actually listened yet (it’s 30 minutes long) but it comes highly recommended.

JUST A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO — in between phoning in pieces on gun control — Nick Kristof was writing that we weren’t going to accomplish anything in the Phillipines. Judging by this report from the Washington Post he was wrong.

JOE KATZMAN has a lot of very detailed thoughts about dirty bombs, the Al Mujahir arrest, and what it says about Al Qaeda’s capabilities. Very interesting stuff, and well worth a read.

ORIANA FALLACI explains why the French people shouldn’t be blamed for the idiocies of the French intelligentsia in a piece that Chris Newman has translated and posted here.

LOVING AMERICA: H.D. Miller has some interesting observations on the poll I linked yesterday that shows young educated Muslims admiring America.

DUELING AMBULANCES: Dr. Manhattan has identified an interesting juxtaposition.

ATTENTION D.C. BLOGGERS AND BLOG-READERS: I’ll be up in DC on June 28, doing a panel on weblogs at the National Press Club with Mickey Kaus, James Lileks, James Taranto, and some other folks. It’s sponsored by The Idler; here’s a link to their press release. Should be fun.

PAKISTAN SMALLPOX UPDATE: Several readers have emailed to suggest that the outbreak described by The Dawn is really monkeypox. Monkeypox has symptoms similar to smallpox and can be fatal. It’s found only in Africa, but has been discussed as a possible bioweapon, and there’s some evidence that Iraq has been working with it. Thus we might be dealing with an accidental release.

This is possible, though I believe that monkeypox is far less contagious than smallpox. That makes it more appealing as a bioweapon (smallpox is too contagious) but makes the likelihood of “rapidly spreading” cases due to accidental release less, it seems to me.

UPDATE: Reader Micael O’Ronain sends this link to a story with more information on monkeypox and biowar research thereon.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader sends this explanation, which I hope is true:

Another possibility that has surfaced is that measles is sometimes translated from the Arabic as “the small pox” – this evidently has led to many false alarms in the past. Measles would of course fit the symptomology described in the dawn.com article.

But would Pakistanis expect the government to do something about an outbreak of measles?

ERIC RAYMOND EXPLAINS why he’s not a liberal. Or a conservative. Too bad he doesn’t have comments on his page; they’d be filling up fast.

GLOBAL POVERTY & INCOME INEQUALITY ARE DROPPING LIKE STONES! That’s what this article from Business Week (courtesy of reader Todd Bass) says:

Critics of globalization say free trade and cross-border investment have benefited the rich at the expense of the poor. They argue that the ranks of the poor are growing, and that the disparity between rich and poor has grown.

The truth is more cheerful, says Xavier Sala-i-Martin, an economist at Columbia University. He calculates that the fraction of the world’s population below the poverty line (defined as an income of $2 a day in constant 1985 dollars) fell to 19% in 1998 from 41% in 1970 (chart).

Overall inequality has decreased as well. One way economists measure inequality is by the Gini coefficient, a zero-to-one scale on which zero means each person in the world has the same income and one means that a single individual collects the world’s entire income. Sala-i-Martin estimates the world’s Gini coefficient fell to 0.63 in 1998 from 0.66 in 1970.

Rising incomes since 1980 in China and India, the world’s most populous nations, account for most of the improvement. In contrast, poverty worsened in Africa. In 1970, 11% of the world’s poor were in Africa and 76% were in Asia. By 1998, Africa’s share of the poor had risen to 66% and Asia’s had fallen to 15%.

Hmm. Could this be because Asia has become more capitalism-friendly, while Africa remains mostly in the hands of faux-socialist kleptocracies?

FROM OUT OF NOWHERE there’s a huge explosion, with a mushroom cloud climbing to the sky. Quick, launch the nukes before we lose them all!

What? It was only an asteroid strike? Oops. Sorry.

Not such a surprising scenario; strikes like this are observed every few years, usually in the many empty places of the Earth (the North Pacific, and the South Atlantic, to pick a couple in the past twenty years that happened to be seen from aircraft). And they look a lot like nuclear detonations: big fireball, mushroom cloud, etc. Since there are so many more empty places than populated places on earth — most of ’em way out to sea — that’s usually where it happens. But not always. It would be bad if one hit somewhere near India or Pakistan now, for example. And one hit in Kazakhstan in the 1940s. (Good thing it wasn’t 20 years later — or 60 years later).

There are some technical things you can do (the U.S., and probably Russia, and maybe some other countries — but not Pakistan or India, probably — have the capability to tell the difference in near-real-time, or close enough to avoid accidentally launching in response to a nonexistent attack). But when you’ve got a lot of people sitting on nuclear weapons, with enemies close by so that you have only a few minutes instead of the 15-20 minutes of the Cold War era to react, you’ve got a recipe for accidental war.

HMM. ZACH BARBERA thinks he’s spotted a practice run for an Iraqi overthrow operation.

STEVEN DEN BESTE has the answer to why all the college sex columnists are women. I think he’s right.

UPDATE: Reader William Wyatt adds this point:

A refinement on den Beste’s observation that serves to prove his point: it

is not testosterone alone, but heterosexual testosterone, that is the big

enemy. As a more general proposition, when a columnist who is not a

heterosexual male “writes about sex or expresses interest in it, it’s

refreshing, liberating, a sign of the times. When a [heterosexual] man

writes about sex, he’s a pervert.” Dan Savage illustrates the point.

Yes, it’s the baleful influence of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin at work. Those two have poisoned the well for twenty years.