From Fox News Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe?:

"The [Saudis] need to reply and not just say 'these are fabricated reports,'" said Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

MEMRI just released a report that shows that for decades, the Saudi royal family has been the main financial supporter of Palestinian groups fighting Israel. Saudi Arabia came under scrutiny when it was widely reported that it held a fund-raiser last year to raise money for families of suicide bombers in the Middle East.

Through two committees -- the Popular Committee for Assisting Palestinian Mujahideen and the Support Committee for the Al-Quds Intifada -- the Al-Aqsa Fund has given over $4 billion and reportedly pledged Palestinians up to $1 billion to finance the continuation of the Intifada, commonly referred to by Saudi officials as "jihad" and "resistance."

"Four billion dollars is a lot of money and this is just for two committees run by two very high-profile princes," said study author Stalinsky. "It's just a tiny dip in the bucket on Saudi money on what is being spent throughout the world."

Zimbabwe's banks were fast running out of money yesterday....Tellers have been told to hand out only the equivalent of £3.50 to each customer....[The inflation] rate is estimated to be more than 700 per cent, meaning that many more notes are required to buy the same quantity of goods. Most nations facing economic meltdown opt to print more notes, but the only press producing the highest denomination note, of Z$500 (35p), is already working 24 hours a day. Plans to produce larger notes have had to be abandoned until the country can find the foreign currency to import more ink....

A professional assistant at a clinic run by Harare municipality, who earns Z$70,000 a month, started weeping quietly. "We can't believe things will get worse. But each time they get worse. Will it ever end?"

Governor Pataki would be well advised to reconsider his support for Daniel Libeskind ["Pataki Backs Libeskind on Tower," page 1, July 22]. Mr. Libeskind has actually built few projects, none of them office buildings or in any way comparable to the proposed World Trade Center. A Times of London reviewer called his modernist British Museum "a disaster for the Victoria and Albert in particular and for civilization in general."His WTC design was not overly popular, either. During last year's LMDC survey, more respondents chose "none of the above" than either the Libeskind (25%) or Think (33%) designs.

One might acquire a sense of the man by pondering the following quotation from a collection of poetry that he wrote, Fishing From the Pavement:

"America turns its mass-produced urine antennae toward Caesar's arrogant ganglion, while history is advocated by utopians as a substitute for defecating."

This is not the sort of individual we want associated with what will be a premier American landmark.

Leftist college professors have reached a new high in intellectual absurdity. In a recent study published in the Psychological Bulletin, they claim to have discovered that Reagan, Hitler, Mussolini and Rush Limbaugh have important personality traits in common. They are all right-wing "conservatives," by which the authors mean they "resist change."

Whether such resistance is to freedom or to dictatorship is not mentioned. So as not to sound too obviously left-wing, the professors add that left-wing dictators like Stalin, Castro and Khrushchev (who the leftists have consistently supported or excused) also "resisted change," and thus may also be labeled as right-wing "conservatives."

What could be the motive for lumping together an American President, a talk show host and assorted mass murderers? Obviously to try to "psychologize" away anyone who disagrees with the leftists by evading fundamental differences in the content of their ideas, for example, the fact that conservatives, at least the better ones, support America's founding, and decidedly radical, principles of freedom and individual rights, whereas the mass killers only goal was to obliterate all rights in their mad frenzy to seize power and enslave or exterminate all those who opposed them or anyone they did not happen to like.

With nonsense like this passing for objective scientific inquiry, is it any wonder that the American public is becoming increasingly contemptuous of its intellectuals?

"You paint a much more optimistic picture of the state of play in Iraq than anyone reading the front pages of the newspapers and watching news broadcasts in this country would get. Partially, I suspect, that's because of the trickle of reports of American casualties, but also other reports of resistance, as well. What is the news media, what are the news media in this country missing?"

Wolfowitz replied:

"I think the success stories. It's a country that's not easy to get around in, admittedly, and it's not easy to understand. There's a language problem, to begin with. And I don't want to paint a rosy picture; there are real problems. The security problem is real, and the security problem is making it difficult to solve other problems like getting the power and electricity restored.

"But when we visited Najaf, for example, where a relatively small Marine unit is preserving a quite stable situation, not perfect situation, but quite stable, in a city of half a million Shia, who some people predicted would be a huge problem, you had a cameraman there, and I asked if he'd been here before, and he said no, he hadn't, he'd been up north where the fighting's going on, but he hadn't been in the south. And the Marines told me, yes, there was a CNN cameraman who's come here once in the last month, and that was when a Marine was killed.

"It's a hard story to cover, but frankly, I think, maybe success [...] people think isn't as good news.

"But the south of the country is largely stable. This is the Shia heartland, which some people predicated would be big trouble. The north of the country is largely stable. This is the country where you have a potentially volatile ethnic mixture of Kurds and Turks and Arabs, and some people predicted that would be trouble. Where we're having trouble -- and we're making progress even there -- is in this Baathist, Saddamist heartland, including his hometown of Tikrit, where the killers of the old regime are putting out $100 for someone to attack a power line and $500 for someone to attack an American. And that's where the trouble is coming from."

"Richard, as you well know, there's fresh video tonight as well of the bodies of Saddam's two sons after they were cleaned up by Army morticians. We want to warn everybody, the images are still very graphic, but are those new images any more persuasive to the Iraqi people?"

"They are not really more persuasive. But they certainly are more controversial. These bodies were quite radically altered. First, the men were shaved, then putty was used to remodel their faces, make-up was also applied to make them look more life-like. The Americans, however, say these are certainly the men and even displayed a metal plate that bears the identical serial number to a plate that was inserted in Uday's leg after an assassination attempt in the 1990s. All of this has been quite offensive to Islamic sensibilities here. Muslims are generally buried in a simple white shroud without any embalming process at all, Tom."

New York lawmakers are criticizing the Bush administration for its decision to classify a portion of the Joint Select Committee on Intelligence's report on the September 11 attacks. Senator Schumer came out swinging yesterday, demanding that the 28-page classified section of the report be publicly released. The classified portion of the report is believed to contain damaging information about the role of Saudi Arabia in the September 11 attacks. 'I just don't understand the administration here. There seems to be a systematic strategy of coddling and coverup when it comes to the Saudis,' Mr. Schumer said.

The House late Tuesday evening adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Vito Fossella to withdraw American aid to any United Nations commission chaired by a country that has sponsored international terrorism. Mr. Fossella, a Republican, cited such absurdities as Iraq chairing a commission on disarmament as a reason to adopt his amendment. The State Department submitted a letter opposing the Fossella proposal to a House appropriator.

It's about time.

George Bush confirmed on Friday that he has ordered the US military "in limited numbers" to head into the area to support a West African peacekeeping mission. But it is still unclear precisely what the role of these forces will be, or how they will be deployed. A three-ship naval task forces headed by the amphibious helicopter carrier USS Iwo Jima, with up to 2,000 US marines aboard, has been steaming across the Mediterranean to be in a position to respond to the president's orders...

...It looks like US forces will be involved only in a support mission. They may not even set foot on Liberian soil in any significant numbers, but limit themselves to an offshore role. That may disappoint many of those who have been pressing for the Americans to take a lead. ["Uncertainties of US Liberia mission", 25 July, 2003, BBC]

Recommended Reading: Foreign Policy and Self-Interest: Liberia Campaign Would Be a Moral Crime
A foreign policy based solely on America's self-interest is not simply practical, but *moral*--which is why any "humanitarian" mission, such as the proposed campaign in Liberia, is a moral crime.

Trapeze artists with one of the world's most famous circuses have been told to start wearing hard hats to comply with new EU safety rules. Jugglers, tightrope walkers and other acrobats with the Moscow State Circus, which is currently touring Britain, have also been instructed to don safety head wear because of European regulations covering workers employed at heights greater than the average stepladder.

...Goussein Khamdouleav, 48, who performs somersaults - without a safety net - as part of the highest indoor tightrope act in Europe, scoffed at the idea that a safety hat would be much use to him if he fell 45ft to the ring below.

...Mr Archer added: "The hats could be more of a liability than anything else. They could slip over the artists' eyes or throw the performers off balance. "This is just another loony law from Brussels and we are the only country stupid enough to pay any attention."  [UK Telegraph, "Circus acts told to wear hard hats under new EU law", July 23, 2003]