Hezbollah leader Imad Moughniyah, on the United States’ most wanted list for attacks on Israeli and Western targets, was killed by a bomb in Damascus, the Lebanese group said on Wednesday…
He was implicated in the 1983 bombings of the U.S. embassy and U.S. Marine and French peacekeeping barracks in Beirut, which killed over 350 people, as well as the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s.
As it happens, one of my favorite things ever written by anyone anywhere was about Moughniyah. This is from a 2001 article about him by Kenneth Zimmerman in the Washington Times:
Imad Fayez Mugniyeh [is] a Lebanese Shiite long considered one of the world’s most ruthless and elusive killers…
Once the Palestinians were kicked out of Lebanon in 1983, Mugniyeh and his two brothers, Fuad and Jihad, joined a new organization set up by Iran called Hezbollah (Party of God). Its goal was to drive the Western powers out of Lebanon…
Intelligence officials believe Mugniyeh is seeking personal vengeance on the United States and Israel for the deaths of his brothers, which explains in part his willingness to lend his expertise to operations organized by other groups. Mugniyeh’s brothers were killed in retaliatory attacks in Lebanon believed to have been carried out by Israeli and U.S. operatives.
“Bin Laden is a schoolboy in comparison with Mugniyeh,” an Israeli-intelligence officer told Jane’s Foreign Report recently. “The guy is a genius, someone who refined the art of terrorism to its utmost level. We studied him and reached the conclusion that he is a clinical psychopath motivated by uncontrollable psychological reasons, which we have given up trying to understand. The killing of his two brothers by the Americans only inflamed his strong motivation.“
Wait…you’re telling me that a young man, when his country was invaded by foreigners, got angry? And then when they killed his brothers, he became even madder? And he wanted revenge on the people who’d done it?
Well, we’ll put our best scientific minds to work on it, but I don’t think we have any hope of understanding this bizarre freak of nature. He’s simply too far outside human norms for us ever to comprehend.
Just Foreign Policy has produced an excellent new video about the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, featuring (among others) Stephen Kinzer. They’ve also organized a nationwide tour during February and March on U.S. policy, titled “The Folly of Attacking Iran.” Unlike most U.S. discussion of Iran, it features people who actually know what they’re talking about (again, including Stephen Kinzer).
Arthur Silber-heads will be pleased to see he has returned, with an appreciation of pianist Leon Fleisher that also wisely examines how politics and art intersect.
I am watching this race with the greatest of interest, and I know all of the leading candidates…
And I will ultimately vote for the person I believe brings to the American people the kind of vision the American people want to see for the next four years. A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world, that starts to restore confidence in America, that starts to restore favorable ratings to America.
Frankly, we’ve lost a lot in recent years. I am going to be looking for the candidate that seems to me to be leading a party that is fully in sync with the candidate, and a party that will also reflect America’s goodness and America’s vision…
I am a Republican, but I am keeping my options open at the moment.
WASHINGTON - John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign. “I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney prepared to tell conservatives.
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“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney will say at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
By the time I was in seventh grade, I had read pretty much everything by Phillip K. Dick that I could get my hands on, which might explain something about my outlook on the world. At any rate, the idea of Dick writing a book specifically aimed at the “young adult” market just makes me happy somehow.
From the opening paragraphs of “Nick and the Glimmung” (a sequel of sorts to Dick’s 1969 novel “Galactic Pot Healer”), you can tell we’re in a vaguely sinister future dystopia:
Nick knew exactly why his family intended to leave Earth and go to another planet, a colony world, and settle there. It had to do with him and his cat, Horace. Owning animals of any kind had, since the year 1992, become illegal. Horace, in fact, was illegal, whether anyone owned him or not.
For two months now, Nick had owned Horace, but he had managed to keep Horace inside the apartment, out of sight. One morning, however, Horace climbed through an open window; he scampered and played out in the back yard which all the apartment-owners in the building shared. Someone, a neighbor perhaps, noticed Horace and called the anti-pet man.
“I told you what would happen if Horace ever got out,” Nick’s dad said…
A few pages later, Dick touches on another of his favorite themes: the idea of an authority figure - in this case, a schoolteacher - who propagates their power through the magic of television:
“Good morning, Class,” Miss Juth said - or rather her image on the big television screen at the front of the classroom said. Miss Juth, like all teachers, had too many classes to teach. She could not appear in person in any of them. Instead, she spoke to all her students, in all her classes, by means of a TV screen. In Nick’s class there were sixty-five pupils, and Mis Juth (as she had told them) taught nine other classes, too. So in all, Miss Juth had about six hundred pupils. Nevertheless, she seemed to recognize each pupil. At least, Nick had that impression. When she spoke to him from the big TV screen she seemed to look directly at him, to see him as well as hear him. He usually felt as if Miss Juth were actually in the classroom.
And here’s an introductory lesson in ontology, made palatable for the kiddies, when the protagonist discovers a book that seems to have the ability to predict the future:
Yes, there it was. Right in the book. A short but accurate account of Mr. Frankis’ death. Had this passage been here yesterday? Nick wondered. Suppose he had looked this up, on the car trip to the house? Suppose Mr. Frankis had looked for his own name in the index? Would he have found this - and known what was going to happen to him? …
What is there in the book about me? Nick wondered. The text which we read before, on the way here, after Glimmung accidentally gave the book to me? Or by now has it changed?
Meanwhile, the Republican far right has fallen into a remarkable snit over John McCain’s march to the nomination. Rush Limbaugh is virtually gnawing his own ankle in rage. By co-authoring legislation with Democrats, Limbaugh ranted, McCain was working with “threats to the American way of life as we’ve always known it.” James Dobson says he won’t vote if McCain is the nominee because of infractions ranging from failure to back a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to “foul and obscene language.” Ann Coulter claims she’d support Clinton “because she’s more conservative than he is.”
Once again, the reason for everything terrible about American politics for the last 20 years becomes clear. These people are nuts.
Shutting out Fox News was one of the smarter things the Democrats have done this season. But you can always count on a Clinton to toss progressives overboard at the first opportunity:
Risking the ire of progressive activists, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced that it has accepted a debate to air on Fox News on February 11, according to her chief strategist Mark Penn.
“There is an enormous interest in these debates an clamoring on the part of the Democratic Party for them,” said Clinton’s spokesperson Howard Wolfson. “We have not had a large number in which two people have participated. We’ve had multi-candidate debates… the fact is Senator Clinton has enjoyed the opportunity to debate and get her message out. Certainly as we move to the next exciting day of this nomination calendar, voters want the opportunity to see these two candidates compete against each other.”
