THE GERMAN DEBATE OVER THE WAR:
Why Opposition Is So Deep and Widespread
By ANTHONY J. SEBOK
The key to understanding the German rejection of the current war is contained in the following statistic: 79% believe that it is a violation of international law.
(FINDLAW)

NEW PURPOSE FOR EMBARGO FOES
''Right now, Fidel Castro has the only microphone out there; let's make it more difficult for the Castro regime to keep control of the situation,'' said Rep. Jeff Flake, a conservative Republican from Arizona, who plans to propose legislation again this year to prohibit the use of U.S. funds to enforce the travel ban.
(Miami Herald)

ARAB AMERICAN HELD WITHOUT DUE PROCESS
On Thursday morning, March 20, Mike Hawash, a long-time Intel employee was arrested outside their offices. He was taken into custody by the FBI and members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The employer later learned that he was being "detained" as a material witness. Simultaneously, FBI agents in bulletproof vests and carrying M-16s woke the man's wife and three children in their home, searched it for four hours, and presented her with a grand jury subpoena.
All of the court documents in this case are sealed. He was held incommunicado from his wife and attorneys for several days. When they did contact him, neither he, his attorneys, nor anyone else knows why he is being detained. Hawash is a long-time U.S. citizen, originally of Palestinian birth and previously of Jordanian nationality. He has been a U.S. citizen for many years, having attended college in Texas. He has worked for Intel on and off for 10 years. Visit this webpage for more information. (or See Oregonian story unearthed by Paul Whitehurst)

THE TRAP
In 1993, the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington published, in Foreign Affairs, an essay entitled "The Clash of Civilizations." Its thesis was that the essential divisions in the post-Cold War world are not among nations or ideologies but among "civilizations": Islamic, Slavic-Orthodox, Confucian, Hindu, Japanese, and Western. "The next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations,"Huntington wrote.
Just as Francis Fukuyama's essay on "the end of history" was—for a while, in certain circles—a convenient and triumphal way of looking at the collapse of Communist ideology, one that allowed us to dream sweetly of the inexorable spread of market democracy to all reaches of the world, Huntington's much darker scheme is now sure to be revived in primary colors by some as a map of the conflict now before us, with the most irreconcilable clash being between the West and Islam.
(from a 9/23/01 Issue of New Yorker)

KILLING CIVILIANS: THE IMMORAL FACE OF WAR
On television, it looks so clean. On Sunday evening, the BBC showed burning civilian cars, its reporter — ‘embedded’ with American forces — saying that he saw some of their passengers lying dead beside them. That was all. No pictures of the charred corpses, no close-ups of the shriveled children. So perhaps I should warn those of what the BBC once called a nervous disposition to go no further. But if they want to know what America and Britain are doing to the innocent of Baghdad, they should read on.
(Arab News)

FORMER JAIL MATE ACCUSES SADDAM OF BETRAYING HIM
About Saddam, Rekabi said: “He has a strong personality. He frightened everybody around him. He respected only the strong and was afraid of nothing except a few people like Ahmed Al-Azawi, and he was assassinated in Syria in 1970s.”
(Arab News)

ARAB FRIENDS' DESPAIR
"People in Egypt and many parts of the Arab world used to love America, and now they have a sense of being betrayed, misunderstood, taken lightly," he said. "And when it comes to the central problem of the Middle East — the Arab-Israeli conflict — we feel that even a minimum of American even-handedness is missing."
(NYT)

A BLUES PRIMER
Ever wonder about the blues? Here's an excellent research resource.
(author unknown, unearthed by Patti Martin)