Free Republic

One of the natural and negative consequences of political assassinations is that they personalize the general and simplify the complex. Policies formed in the aftermath of assassinations are rarely wise and tend to focus on secondary - personal - issues while ignoring larger strategic ones. It is fairly clear that this is what is happening in the international reaction to last Thursday's assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zadawi and her teenage son have now taken charge of her political party in the interest of maintaining her "legacy." Backed by the Bush administration, they...

It’s tempting to rerun my column on Pakistan from a month ago. Not because I predicted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto or offered any other great insight, but rather for the opposite reason: “Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything: General Musharraf should do this, he shouldn’t have done that, the State Department should lean on him to do the other… Well, I dunno. It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad.” Oh, well. In the stampede of instant experts unveiling their Pakistani solutions-in-a-box, some contributions are worthy...

ZIMBABWE'S annual inflation jumped to a record 2,200 percent in March, central bank Governor Gideon Gono said on Thursday as the country's economic and political crisis deepened. He dismissed calls to devalue the Zimbabwean currency, saying it would remain at its official peg of 250 to the U.S. dollar -- almost 100 times less than the black market rate -- although he said the bank would buy foreign exchange at a new rate to help build a "drought stabilisation fund". Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, is crippled by foreign currency and fuel shortages, unemployment of over 80 percent...

“Youths” Kick Man to Death on Crowded Antwerp Bus The Belgian state is no longer able to guarantee the security of its citizens. On Saturday afternoon Guido Demoor, a 54-year old Flemish train conductor on his way to work, was kicked to death by six “youths” on a crowded bus near Antwerp’s Central Station. The incident recalls the rush-hour murder ten weeks ago of Joe Van Holsbeeck, 17 years of age, in a crowded Brussels Central Station on 12 April. Guido Demoor, a father of two, intervened when six “youths” got on bus 23 in Antwerp and began to intimidate...

Conakry - Inhabitants of the Guinean capital Conakry were in shock on Sunday after two attacks on rice stocks, one of which involved overnight break-ins at the central food market. On Saturday, two trucks carrying a total of some 60 tons of rice were stopped by groups of young men in a southern suburb of Conakry and emptied of their contents, with the looters making off before police arrived. Several stores owned by traders in the central Madina market were then broken into and robbed in the early hours of Sunday, with the attackers taking away several tons of rice...

Even the official name of North Korea suggests that things have gone badly off track and are mired in the ditch. On a really good day, I can spell Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Even on a great day, I'd never want to live there. If a country's official name gets any longer or more bureaucratic than say, Los Estados Unidos de Mexico, a lot of things have probably gone terribly wrong in the State of Denmark, or anywhere else that happens to call itself a People's Republic. As if there was some other kind... North Korea's problems begin with...

ASUNCION, Paraguay - Thousands of Paraguayans chanting "Justice! Justice!" crowded a cemetery Friday to say farewell to former President Raul Cubas's daughter, who was found dead this week after being kidnapped five months ago. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: Daughter of Former Paraguayan President Found Dead Hundreds more lined streets of the capital, reaching out to touch the hearse carrying the body of Cecilia Cubas. Police on motorcycles led the funeral cortege. Her father, president from August 1998 to March 1999, was driven from power by deadly street riots and turmoil set off by the assassination of his vice president.

This article intends to trace the roots of Islamic terrorism, with special focus on Afghanistan. Notes are added on practical and philosophical problems of world media in finding the right track. From systematic errors in revealing little details, to serious misconceptions about basic facts and principles, we can relatively easily learn how much of "common knowledge" rests actually on superficial research and popular myths. Instead of becoming critical and aware of the traps laid around the issue, both Islamists and Islamophobes fail to recognize how they are manipulated. Terrorism is real Terrorism is not as difficult a concept as some...