BBC: Yemen’s uphill struggle with al-Qaeda. The fact that Yemen became the first Arab country to use military force against al-Qaeda is big news.

So a few weeks ago I was surprised to see that Ariel Sharon lives in an area of Jerusalem called the Muslim Quarter. I thought that sounded odd, and indeed, a bit of research reveals that the Muslim Quarter is in east Jerusalem, the place where the Palestinians would like to someday have their capital. Then, when I was reading the story from The Nation yesterday about the current state of things in Israel, I read that a group called Ateret Cohanim bought Sharon’s house for him, using donations from American Jews. Here’s the paragraph:

Just as ominous, as far as Muslims are concerned, is a messianic Jewish group called Ateret Cohanim (the Priestly Crown). Using large sums of money donated by American Jews, the group has bought buildings near the Dome of the Rock, where young Jewish students who believe that the Messiah’s coming is imminent study how to slaughter a red heifer, whose ashes must be mixed with incense and then used to purify the high priests before they enter the newly built Jewish temple. Ateret Cohanim even bought Sharon a large Arab stone house in the Muslim quarter, which he draped with a large Israeli flag.

This, of course, led me to do more research on the group. The primary benefactor of Ateret Cohanim is Dr. Irving Moskowitz, who runs a bingo parlor that donates millions of dollars to right wing Jewish causes (like Ateret Cohanim, which is colonizing East Jerusalem). Anyway, you can find out more about Mr. Moskowitz at stopmoskowitz.org.

According to this story, Sharon moved into the house in the Moslem Quarter back in 1987, sparking riots at that time. It’s difficult to imagine an act more belligerent than buying a house for the Israeli political figure most despised by Palestinians in the middle of an area that Palestinians consider their own.

Anyway, for all the well deserved flack that Yasser Arafat gets, it’s clear that Ariel Sharon is no better than he is. From his role in the Sabra and Chatila massacres, to his decision to accept free housing from a settler group in the middle of Palestinian Jerusalem, to his march on the Temple Mount that he knew would spark a wave of violence, Sharon has demonstrated that he has absolutely no desire for peace with the Palestinians. Any time you hear him talking about it, just remember that his goals lie elsewhere.

Here’s the al-Qaeda most wanted list. If you see any of these guys at the grocery store, please call Donald Rumsfeld.

Paul Boutin has an optomistic take on where the recording industry is headed today in Salon. He theorizes that the recording industry’s futile attempts to build effective copy protection systems for music and perhaps not-so-futile attempts to legislate copy protection into everything that runs on electricity are just a sideshow . He claims that the real action is in trying to come up with a workable offering that will maintain the profitability of the industry and win customers back from piracy. His article doesn’t convince me that the recording industry (and even worse, the movie industry) isn’t dead serious about permanently forcing a bunch of restrictive crap to be included in PCs of the future. They may be coming up with alternatives to file sharing, but that doesn’t preclude them from continuing to flog Congress for nasty new legislation.

Everybody seems to love Lord of the Rings. I can’t express how excited that makes me. I doubt I’ll see it until after Christmas just due to scheduling issues, but I can’t wait. It’s not like anybody can spoil it for me anyway.

Paul Krugman on Enron, Death by Guru:

Enron sold lots of things, but above all it sold itself: it crafted a self-portrait that business gurus loved. Like a schematic diagram from The McKinsey Quarterly or The Harvard Business Review, Enron’s business plan made a perfect PowerPoint presentation. Other companies hired business gurus as consultants; Enron, in effect, put the gurus in charge. (Jeff Skilling, who made Enron what it is today, is a former McKinsey consultant.) What they created was a company so trendy that investors were dazzled. And that let executives get away with financial murder.

John Sutherland: America and its advantages … I need to spend more time in other countries so that I can appreciate this stuff more. (Link via kenlayne.com.)

The Nation has an article on the current situation in Israel and the occupied territories. The article doesn’t apologize for the Palestinians, but is more sympathetic to them than it is to Sharon’s Israeli government.

The New York Times magazine has an amazing article, Naji’s Taliban Phase, about two fighters on opposite sides who corresponded during the civil war in Afghanistan. An excerpt:

Until Ali’s letters began arriving, Naji says, he believed that the Northern Alliance forces were composed primarily of non-Islamic, non-Afghan fighters. This idea, Naji says, was often repeated by the Taliban leadership. Ali’s letters refuted it, and Naji became curious. He began to question a lot of what he’d been taught. In Taloqan, which was once the Northern Alliance capital, he spoke with civilians passing through his roadblock. ”Everyone told me the same thing,” Naji says. ”They told me that all of the Northern Alliance fighters were Afghans.”

Naji also had a troubling sense that, as a Tajik in a Pashtun-controlled army, he was never afforded more than second-class status. ”This is why I spent so many days on the front lines,” he says. ”This is why I was never made an officer.” He felt somehow expendable; he worried that a Taliban victory might eventually exclude him. He discussed these ideas in his letters to Ali. They also corresponded about ”the culture of Islam,” as Naji puts it. ”Ali wrote that a Muslim can have a long beard or a short one, can go to mosque or not, can wear a burka or not, and still be a good Muslim. I was very nervous to write this, but I said I agreed with him.”

There’s a puff piece at the Salt Lake 2002 site explaining how the Olypic torch bearers were chosen. I mention this because my aunt was selected as one of the torch bearers and got to carry the torch for a few hundred yards last week down in Texas. Unlike some nominees, who collude with the person who nominates them, my aunt was selected after my sister nominated her without my aunt’s foreknowledge. So I just want to congratulate my aunt and sister for the accomplishment (and my aunt for everything she’s accomplished that led to her being selected).