Jacob Laksin
Jacob Laksin is managing editor of Front Page Magazine.
For those familiar with the stellar reputation of Israel’s clandestine services, the recent hit on a Hamas operative and arms dealer in Dubai seems oddly atypical. It was, to the outside observer, an embarrassingly sloppy effort: The agents who allegedly carried out the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (pictured above) in his luxury hotel room made what appear to be a series of rookie mistakes, for instance allowing themselves to be caught on video surveillance cameras and using the stolen passports of Israeli citizens. Hardly the kind of work one would associate with the Israeli Mossad, whose efficiency in covert operations is the stuff of cloak-and-dagger legend.
Indeed, even Hamas is starting to have doubts. Having initially pointed the finger at Israel, Hamas now suspects that the security services of another Arab state – possibly Jordan or Egypt – could have been behind the assassination. read more…
By and large, a strong indication that someone is losing an argument is their readiness to resort to ad hominem attacks. So it is with the Left’s campaign to smear the eminent Middle East scholar Martin Kramer as a racist and an advocate of “genocide” against Palestinians.
At incendiary issue are some brief remarks that Kramer delivered last month at a conference in Herzliya, Israel, while taking part in a panel called “Rising to the Challenge of Islamic Indoctrination.” Taking issue with the panel’s theme, Kramer suggested that some of the standard explanations for the rise of radicalism – religious and political indoctrination, the lack of democratic instructions – were inadequate to explain the prevalence of extremism in, for instance, Palestinian society. Referencing the work of German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, Kramer suggested another possible explanation: a high fertility rate that gives rise to masses of unemployed and impressionable men ripe for radical recruitment. Here is Kramer: read more…
Can California elect a Republican to the Senate? In a more conventional time, that might seem like a fanciful question. But with Scott Brown’s improbable victory in true-blue Massachusetts, it’s very much within the realm of possibility. Further underscoring that point, today’s New York Times reports on the surprisingly competitive race between three Republican challengers to unseat 17-year Senate veteran and liberal icon Barbara Boxer. California Democrats continue to enjoy some traditional advantages – 1.5 million more registered voters, for one – but Boxer’s hold on the Senate seat seems increasingly precarious, and her past political success is not necessarily prologue:
John J. Pitney Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said Mrs. Boxer’s previous easy victories in Senate races could be misleading, since they took place in what were more favorable political environments. “She may be more vulnerable than it seems at first,” Professor Pitney said.
The tightening poll numbers bear this out, and even Boxer herself acknowledges: read more…
The winter Olympics may seem an odd occasion to celebrate the virtues of entrepreneurial capitalism and economic decentralization, but a front-page piece in today’s New York Times provides an appropriate opportunity to do just that.
As the winter games conclude, the U.S. leads all competing countries in total medals won – 36 and counting – and is on pace to break the record for the most medals won at the winter games. An incredible feat, and one achieved largely without reliance on government-funded athletic programs that have traditionally molded Olympic athletes and that are still used by much of the world. read more…
The latest Vanity Fair carries an amusing and appropriately graphic account of the life and death of Exile, a now-defunct, Moscow-based English language newspaper run by American expatriates that managed to piss off a lot of people – usually, but not always, for bad reasons – in its short and mostly obscure decade-long existence. As a Russian immigrant myself, I occasionally read the paper’s online version, finding it mostly crass and vulgar, which, in fairness, was rather the idea. If nothing else, the Vanity Fair piece is worth reading for the antics of Exile’s editors, the now estranged pair of Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi (pictured above), and its cast of colorful contributors. Not for the squeamish:
Writer Kevin McElwee, an American expatriate, had both legs broken when he was torn from the side of a building he was scaling to escape an angry mob of Muscovites, an incident that had nothing to do with anything he’d written—McElwee, The Exile’s film reviewer, was just a rambunctious drunk. On another occasion, a deranged and slighted man sent a letter promising to kill the “frat boy” Ames. Ames in turn published an editorial urging the loon to instead off his co-editor, Matt Taibbi. read more…
