One question that’s been on people’s minds is when Ramadan ends exactly. Of course, one reason people are wondering is that there were lots of rumors of terrorist attacks at the end of Ramadan, but let’s brush that aside for now. Anyway, National Geographic has an article that explains how Ramadan ends and Eid-al-Fitr begins. (Ramadan ended Saturday night. My neighbors had a lot of cars in front of their house yesterday, their Eid-al-Fitr celebration must be in full swing.)
Tamim Ansary has a great article in Salon about the aspirations of Afghan women and the reality of rural Afghan culture. He makes the important point that forcing Western values onto rural Afghans is a non-starter, and then goes on to make some very reasonable suggestions about roles women might play in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. I think it’s important not to allow one group of people (say, men) to force a lifestyle on another group of people (say, women) that they don’t want. However, that’s equally valid if you substitute “Westerners” and “Afghans” into the equation. In other words, forcing women to wear burqas is obviously wrong, but so is looking down on Afghan women if they choose to wear them.
Mickey Kaus asks an interesting question: does welfare cause terrorism? His argument is worth reading, even if you don’t agree with it.
Sunday’s Washington Post had a long article by Ted Gup on CIA scientist Sidney Gottlieb, whose LSD experiments and work on poisons and other biological weapons seem almost too bizarre to have been true. Gottlieb’s work demonstrates the worst outcomes of the ends justify the means sort of thinking that dominated the Cold War. It should also serve as a cautionary tale to those who would throw out basic human ethics in service to the war on terrorism. (Link via Red Rock Eater.)
Last week FAS issued a statement on our withdrawal from the ABM treaty.
Bush Administration Documents on Secrecy Policy
Last night I was flipping channels and as I paused for a few minutes on the Food TV Network, I tried to decide who is more articulate, Emeril Lagasse or President Bush. I still haven’t made up my mind.
I’m one of the blogger of the year nominees at Scripting News. I’m both surprised and flattered. Looking at the list, I’m in good company as well.
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).
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.’’
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.