Terrorism: May 2002 Archives

Tom Friedman was in town last week talking at Temple Emmanuel, and somehow, I only just now found out about it — from the Jewish Bulletin, of all places. Anyway, some of the best sound bites:The motivations of terrorists:"'People don't fly planes into buildings because they're poor...They fly planes into buildings because of a 'cognitive dissonance' that comes from severe jolts to their faith — the result of being castigated to the fringes of society [n Europe] and also by seeing so many Christians and Jews who are living more powerfully than they are as Muslims.'" Bush's "foreign policy""'Bush's initial foreign policy was "if Clinton was for it -- then I'm against it,"' an attitude Friedman said formed the crux of Bush's Middle Eastern diplomacy until Sept. 11."Sharon"I think Sharon went to Temple Mount after he realized that Netanyahu's political career had been revived. I believe that the competition between these two men has been deeply destructive for their political party and for Israel." The other interesting article was in yesterday's Washington Post and today's Chronicle, about Microsoft trying to pressure the Pentagon into dropping its use of open-source software on the grounds that it's a security risk and "un-American." Funnily enough, that's not what the government itself found when they did a study on the merits of open-source versus proprietary...if Microsoft gets its way, the terrorists have won, in my opinion. ;-)