Yesterday, the New York Times ran transcripts of the communications with air traffic control of three of the four hijacked planes from 9/11:

Here’s a link to the accompanying story.

This MSNBC article (link via Dangerousmeta) describes the reaction among the students and teachers at a madrisa (see this article or more on madrisas) to the videotape of the attack on the World Trade Center. The students had never seen the World Trade Center, New York, or a television, so seeing the footage of the attack was obviously a shock to them. Despite the fact that the students are quite possibly being trained as terrorist shock troops for the ongoing conflict in the Kashmir, they and their teacher were appalled by the footage. Many of the people who disapprove of Westerners don’t know the first thing about America. Osama bin Laden and the hijackers from the 9/11 don’t have that excuse.

Members of the PFLP, whose leader was assassinated by the Israeli military in August, gunned down an Israeli cabinet member in a Jerusalem hotel today. The man who was killed, Rehavam Zeevi, was the leader of a far right political party, and was an advocate of removing Palestinians from the occupied territories. Rather than holding the PLFP responsible, Ariel Sharon has unsurprisingly blamed the assassination on Yasser Arafat and will probably use it as a pretext to escalate the conflict with the Palestinians, despite the fact that the murders were committed by members of a specific group which has a clear motive for committing the crime. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that when you assassinate the leader of a terrorist group, they reciprocate.

A readers submitted a link to MEMRI, which describes itself as:

Welcome to the website of The Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, non-profit organization providing translations of the Arab media and original analysis and research on developments in the Middle East.

It’s a great site. For example, check out this letter castigating the Muslim world for blaming the United States (and the West) for creating Osama bin Laden. Here’s an excerpt:

“Renouncing these prodigal sons and attempting to lay them at the door of the West is shirking responsibility. It would be better to admit our paternity, and thus [admit] that our primary mistake in the education we gave them was that we closed our societies, our schools, and our media to freedom and knowledge, to the possibility of learning from mistakes. Once, we did this in the name of Islamic religious law; another time, we did it in the name of progressiveness and the struggle against imperialism. Only when [we are capable] of acknowledging this will we be able to deal with the enemy without, however powerful he may be.”

MEMRI also provides translations of things said in the Arabic media which are just nonsense and bigotry, like this quote from an Egyptian imam who left the United States after September 11, because he was being harrassed:

Gamei’a: “Before the incident, the situation of Muslims was normal (in America). The federal government treated them normally. But after the incident, things deteriorated. All [commercial] activity with anyone found to be a Muslim or an Arab was immediately halted, and the federal bureaus stopped matters. Furthermore, he was thoroughly investigated, and asked: ‘Why did you come to America? What is your connection to Osama bin Laden? What do you know about the [Islamic] Jihad, Hamas, and Hizbullah organizations?’ Therefore, the Muslim feels imprisoned.”

“Following the incident, Muslims and Arabs stopped feeling that it was safe to leave [their homes]. They stopped feeling that it was safe to send their wives to the market or their children to the schools. Muslims do not feel safe even going to the hospitals, because some Jewish doctors in one of the hospitals poisoned sick Muslim children, who then died.”

MSNBC has launched an Arabic version of its site in partnership with an Arabic site called Good News 4 Me. The BBC’s news site is also available in Arabic.

The Mozilla 1.0 Manifesto outlines the plan for releasing version 1.0 of the browser we’ve been waiting on lo these many years. The goal is to release version 1.0 within 6 months. I’m typing this into version 0.9.5, and have found it to be very stable and usable since it was released last week.

In honor of the runup to the Windows XP launch, CNet is running a series of articles about the new operating system and Microsoft’s aims behind it.

Microsoft has decided to blame the victim for their public humiliation at the hands of people who write viruses and worms that take advantage of their software. According to Microsoft flack Scott Culp, security professionals (link from Medley) bear responsibility for the attacks because they publicize security holes in Microsoft software and explain what, exactly, those security holes are. I think this pretty clearly illustrates why Microsoft’s products have so many security holes in the first place – the company’s employees refuse to take responsibility for their poor design decisions and inadequate testing.

The BBC is reporting that friction is increasing between the Arab Afghans and the regular old Afghans. If the Arab Afghans go, then the Taliban goes with them. If these reports are true, then it also means that the Bush administration’s strategy in Afghanistan is working as designed. The question that remains is whether we or our allies can get the people of Afghanistan to agree to support a some sort of representative government that’s not interested in persecuting other ethnic groups or letting the country descend into lawlessness.