As I said a couple of days ago, the Vanguardia has been frenziedly printing anti-American rants this week. Probably the worst, though, was this one from last Thursday by a guy named Azzam Tamimi, who is billed as "the Director of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London and a teacher at the Markfield Institute of Superior Education in Leicestershire". Wow. Sounds impressive, all right. I've only translated a couple of the more offensive paragraphs.

It seems that the influential bureaucrats in Washington, "all the President's men", have three good reasions to start a war for. On one side, there is the oil. The United States has no option but to take over Iraq's petroleum, the second largest reserves in the world, if it wants to avert a national economic disaster. On another side is Israel. The war, according to what some of Bush's advisors believe, is necessary to guarantee that their loyal ally, Israel, continue being the only regional power in possession of "weapons of mass destruction". Whether it's because of the oil or Israel or both things, the war is also George W. Bush's only chance to get elected next year. After looking at all this, Bush seems to have defeat assured if he does not declare war; but if he declares it, according to what he is told, he will be able to count on a good result.

Note that 1) there is not a speck of evidence demonstrating that any of these three assertions are true, and if there is, you didn't learn it from the author 2) the author seems to believe he knows what Mr. Bush's advisors are telling him to do--what's he got, X-ray ears or something?--and that Mr. Bush is the puppet of these "bureaucrats" 3) the American elections aren't for 19 more months and anything can happen politically between now and then, and, by the way, remember the last Iraqi election when Saddam got 100% of the vote? We have REAL elections 4) the author assumes that the United States, being evil incarnate, naturally has not only one but three base motives to massacre poor starving Iraqi babies. Couldn't be because the Americans believe that Saddam Hussein is a threat to their national security, could it? By the way, have you noticed how quickly we've built that pipeline across Afghanistan we fought that war in order to construct?

...Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a densely populated territory. The thirty-six promised hours of saturation bombing that will precede any deployment of ground troops are a quite horrible perspective. The (Iraqi people) fear that, with the objective of minimising their own losses, the American and British forces will resort to the pulverization of all suspicious structures above ground. Millions of Iraqis might be burned alive in the process.

Yeah, just like millions of people got burned alive in Kosovo and Afghanistan and Somalia and Haiti and everywhere else the Americans have sent in ground forces. Even the most extreme America-bashers can't come up with a figure of more than 3000 Afghan civilian dead in the recent war there, 3000 people too many, of course, but probably fewer than in any other six-month period in Afghan history. By the way, according to the World Almanac, Afghanistan's population density is 107 per square mile; Iraq's is 138 per square mile. Major difference there, ain't it? Besides, what 36 hours of saturation bombing? Of course we're not going to saturation-bomb anything. We haven't since the Christmas bombings over Hanoi that drove the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table in Paris. That was thirty years ago.

There are several paragraphs of anti-Israeli slurs, which I'll summarize for y'all: extreme right...pure Jewish state in Palestine...transfer...expulsion...Israeli murder of Palestinians...demolition...destruction...injustices...Israeli occupiers. Then comes this doozy of a last paragraph.

During his recent visit to the United Kingdom, Sheik Yusuf Al Qaradawi, one of the most famous Muslim theologians in the world, declared that up until now he had resisted calls in favor of a fatwa to boycott Great Britain. He explained that his position sprang from his valoration of the British people's position, opposed to the war, and from the hope that the Government will listen to its public opinion and reconsider its decision to line up with the American administration. He emphasized that Muslims should continue differentiating between the American and British positions, unless Great Britain joins the US in the war declared on Iraq. In that case, he warned, Great Britain will also be put on the boycott list.

It seems to me that this paragraph constitutes a threat. It is a blackmailing ultimatum. If you British do not do as Sheik Yusuf and Mr. Tamimi, the author, advise, you will be put under a fatwa. My understanding of the concept of fatwa is that it does not consist of merely a boycott of British products. It seems to me that by using the word "boycott", these thugs think they can beat the law making terroristic threats illegal. I think we are not so dumb.