Today's Wall Street Journal features a maddening front-page story on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch parliamentarian of Somali birth who has been facing death threats for her opposition to Islamism. She has just announced that she is finally leaving Holland following protests from...her neighbors at the luxury housing complex where she lives in opulent high security! They have launched a campaign to evict her, and actually had the chutzpah to argue in court that her peresence in the building was a violation of their "human rights" because the threat of terrorist attack is driving down property values and the security measures mean long waits for the elevator! The courts rejected these scurrilous arguments, but ruled Hirsi Ali must leave anyway because her presence poses a physical threat to her neighbors, and does therefore violate their "human rights." She was given four months to leave in April. Hirsi Ali responded by invoking bitter memories of World War II: "My neighbors seem to confirm the critical veiw that very few Dutch people were brave enough during the Nazi occupation."

Yet again. All it takes is reading the New York Times to get pretty damn paranoid these days. From May 16:

Defendant Says Police Informer Pushed Him Into Bomb Plot
A Pakistani immigrant accused of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2004 took the stand in his own defense yesterday and said he never wanted to carry out an attack until he met a paid police informer who treated him like a younger brother and inflamed his anger against the United States.

Ten Palestinians have been shot and killed in the last two years while protesting Israel's separation wall non-violently. Hundreds of protestors have been injured, including internationals and Israelis. From the ISM media office, May 14:

Non-Violent Demonstration Against the Wall in Ar-Ram Attacked by Israeli Military
Saturday 13th May: Around 800 Palestinian and 200 Israeli and international demonstrators, representing a broad coalition of people, united in a march to call for the dismantling of the Apartheid Wall in the Palestinian town of Ar-Ram, just north of Jerusalem. With the participation of schoolchildren, teachers, neighborhood residents and representatives of all the different Palestinian political parties, it was carefully prepared as a non-violent protest. It was well disciplined, with a line of organizers at the front of the march preventing any impatient youth from provoking a confrontation with the soldiers.

A national summit of indigenous and campesino organizations is meeting at the Guambiano indigenous reserve of La Maria Piendamó, along the Pan-American Highway in Cauca, southern Colombia, and has just been attacked by the security forces. At least one death is reported. From the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), via Colombia Indymedia, May 16 (our translation):

Four helicopters have attacked the summit, launching tear gas. One person is dead, more than 50 injured, 36 persons under arrest and more than 10 disappeared following the assualt by the National Army, the [National] Police and the ESMAD [elite riot squad], against the indigenous, campesinos and Afro-descendants in La María Piendamó, vereda [hamlet] El Rosal-Mondomo, in Cauca.

From Ya Libnan, May 15:

Beirut & Damascus — Prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo was detained after calling for better relations between Syria and Lebanon.

Its about out way of life, remember? From Newsday, May 15:

Fatal accident leaves grief on Mother's Day

It was a simple Mother's Day gift: Alvin Johnson was going to surprise his girlfriend of 20 years, Emma Liverman, with a homemade cake and a meal fit for such a celebration.

Not knowing his plans, she had picked him up at his Springfield Gardens home Saturday afternoon, and was making a U-turn out of a parking spot on Farmers Boulevard at 132nd Street, police said, when a passenger van carrying eight people collided with Liverman's Toyota Camry.

From BBC, May 16. Maybe this will finally shut up the conspiranoiacs. (Yeah, as if...)

Why Pentagon released 9/11 tape

A non-profit government watchdog has succeeded in getting the US to release videotapes of a plane striking the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.

The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December 2004, which was denied a month later, the group says.

From Ha'aretz, May 11:

Fear and loathing in Petah Tikva / Neo-Nazi gangs assaulting ultra-Orthodox Jews
A week after the desecration of the Great Synagogue in Petah Tikva, nothing remains of the horror the worshipers encountered there last Thursday when they arrived for morning prayers. The walls, which had been sprayed with swastikas and blasphemy, have been newly painted, the floor polished and the curtain covering the holy ark replaced.