Faith-based organizations
Well, it looks like some faith-based organizations are being extremely active in continued earthquake relief in Pakistan. Miltant Islamists, in particular. (Has our government really thought this whole faith-based routine through? cf. on Tuesday, the President ordered DHS to create a faith-based division. No word yet on which faiths will be invited to participate.)
(And the article cited suggests that “there is hope that [these] groups… are trading the mantle of militancy for social work.” I’m not really sure why they think that radical groups engaging in social work means they’re going to stop killing people; Hamas has been running schools and hospitals for years, in parallel with suicide bombing campaigns, and they’re far from the only ones)
Okay…
Yes, it looks like Rumsfeld has finally lost his last bit of touch with reality. “U.S. to rely on Iraqi forces to quell civil war” is the headline. Now, the Iraqi forces are in no small part involved in the civil war, but don’t let that intervene.
Seriously, I can see how a civil war in Iraq could even be to the United States’ advantage, but I would really like to know that we’re doing our foreign policy on purpose rather than by accident, and that we have something resembling a sane operational plan for how to protect our own people there when the shit hits the industrial-sized fan.
Not tonight, dear, I have a haddock
I always knew that being in Israel occasionally made tourists go a little odd, but normally it happens in Jerusalem rather than Eilat. And, um, doesn’t involve dolphins.
Some reading material for a long Monday
From Aviation Week: Secret two-stage-to-orbit plane program ends. I’d say it’s pretty likely that these rumors are legit, and if so… damn, that’s a beautiful bit of design. I wish we could reuse it (well, minus the use of insanely toxic fuels) for civilian purposes.
From Seed: A great article on Elizabeth Gould’s research on neurogenesis and stress.
From Philip Greenspun: An interesting article on why there aren’t so many women in science, which basically raises the question of why anyone would be in science. There’s stuff to think about in there…
And if you’re really bored, my own post from a few days ago with more politics stuff. I should really know better than to post long essays over the weekend…
Cross-Currents
Take a look at the following list of articles from the recent past:
Jewish man tortured and killed in France
Russia urges Hamas to change
Bombing of Shi’ite shrine leads to bloodshed
France reassesses its future after major riots
Map of the Cartoon Riots
We are standing on the verge of war, not the minor sort of war we’ve seen so far in Iraq, but an all-out war that could spread across the globe. But there are other counterpressures that could divert the flood into something wholly different.
(more…)
Something to read
Flemming Rose, culture editor of Jyllands-Posten and the editor responsible for the decision to publish the famous cartoons of the Prophet, writes an editorial in the Washington Post explaining why he published them.
(And for the record, I am in entire, wholehearted agreement with Mr. Rose on this issue. I have no sympathy, none whatsoever, for the sorts of people who want everyone in the world to obey their tribal rules. I speak respectfully of the Prophet; but I will defend, without hesitation and with all due force, the right of anyone not to. And frankly, countries that sponsor 41-part television series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as a matter of government policy, really don’t have much room to be complaining about the insensitive Danish free press. Let them choke on it.)
Excellent article
I don’t know why this article hasn’t been more widely noticed. Nir Rosen, a journalist for the NYTimes who is fluent in Arabic, went to Jordan and interviewed jihadis past and present, visited mosques, and generally brought back a vivid and interesting picture of what is going on there. It adds a lot of context to Israeli Gen. Naveh’s recent undiplomatic remarks about the danger to the present regime in Jordan, as well as giving a good picture of where the major players in Iraq today are coming from.
(The article doesn’t explain all the names as well as some articles do, though, so you may want to pop over to Wikipedia occasionally while reading it.)
News snippets
Two bits from the Washington Post: An editorial by George Will about a president acting like a monarch – noteable since it comes from one of the leading conservative writers in the country. And a good history of the cartoon protests going on across the Muslim world.
On a lighter note, here’s a London Tube Map with the names replaced by anagrams, and a standard Tube map for comparison. My favorite is the “Aleph & Tentacles.”
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 
