THE IDLER’S TABLE OF CONTENTS
Grave Prognosis: A Novel by Daniel Kalla, Chapters 34 & 35 “He considered his options as he followed the Jeep over the Burrard Bridge and into downtown Vancouver. He desperately wanted to alert Trevor, but knew that losing the Jeep could prove fatal for Monica. Reluctantly he decided his only option was to follow this car until it reached its destination. Once there he would find help . . .”
Fact Checking Harper’s Magazine by Randy Geller Harper’s Magazine recently published what seemed like a devastating article about Israeli treatment of Palestinians. It would have been — if it had been true . . .
Iran: The Forgotten Challenge by Sam Vaknin Iran’s march towards ever greater openness is inexorable. Whether this is achieved through reform or through bloody mayhem is up to the citizens of this tortured country — and to sensible decision making elsewhere . . .
How the Media Missed the Airline Security Story by Reese Schonfeld “Last Wednesday, I spoke in Virginia Beach as a continuation of my book tour. I concentrated on the need for the media to make life difficult for liars . . . After lunch a woman in the back of the room asked in mournful tone, ‘If I can’t rely on The New York Times where can I turn?’ I shrugged off the question and said, ‘I don’t know . . .'”
CHAPTERS: Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War by Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, and William Broad ” Washington began to mobilize against germ attacks in 1942. President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly denounced the exotic arms of America’s foes as ‘terrible and inhumane,’ even while preparing to retaliate in kind. The man chosen to lead the secret U.S. program was George W. Merck, the president of a drug company. Merck was a household name, and generations of physicians had come to rely on The Merck Manual as a trusted guide for diagnosing and treating disease. But the new effort was designed to be nearly invisible, its degree of secrecy matched only by America’s project to build the atom bomb . . .”
We Must Enlarge the Circle of Human Freedom by Paul Wolfowitz “Perhaps the greatest asymmetric advantage with which weíve been blessed is the one that the terrorists tried to attack on September 11th. That is the power of a free democratic people, whose government is based on universal ideals . . .”
We Can Make a Promised Land into a Land of Promise by Shimon Peres “Bin Laden claims that he wants to help the Palestinians in their conflict, but he is an obstacle to a resolution, not an aid. Israel made peace with Egypt and returned all the land and water without Bin Laden. We did likewise with the Jordanians. Not because of terror, but because of the end of terror . . .”
Kabul Diary: May, 1960 by Alice Goldfarb Marquis Our embassy friend dropped us off at the “American Club,” a ramshackle caravanserai that he deemed superior to the downtown hotel. In a huddle of mud buildings, we were assigned a dark and musty chamber, its only concessions to American obsessions air conditioning and a minimal bathroom. At dinner, we met a young man from a small town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a place that, minus water and will, would much resemble the Afghan landscape. He wanted to be a film maker, he said, and was now at work on his first documentary. His name, just another fellow-wanderer then, was James Ivory . . .
Letter From Jerusalem: How Yasser Arafat Gets Away with Murder by Arlynn Nellhaus In 1973 Yasser Arafat’s voice was recorded on tape personally ordering the murder of the two American diplomats. Yet, he has never been brought to justice by the American government . . .
Pakistan’s Nice Little War by Sam Vaknin. The Taliban are a creation of Pakistan. Nevertheless, Pakistan stands to benefit greatly — economically as well as politically — from the destruction of the Taliban at the hands of the anti-terror coalition . . .
Muslim Soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan: To Fight or Not to Fight? by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) “As soon as the U.S. geared up for the war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan . . . Army Chaplain Capt. Abd Al-Rasheed Muhammad, the Imam of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. sent an inquiry on the matter to the North American Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence) Council, which in turn referred the matter to clerics in the Arab world. The clerics issued a Fatwa permitting Muslim soldiers to take part in the fighting if there was no alternative . . . But on October 30, the editor of the Arabic London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat …
