An interesting commentary from Robert Fisk on watching Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven in Beirut. But we do wish the boy would learn a bit more about the part of the world he has built a career reporting from. The "Arabs of Somalia" aren't—they are Somalis. And he commits the same error again when he notes that Saladin was played by Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud, stating: "and thank God the Arabs in the film are played by Arabs." Saladin wasn't an Arab, he was a Kurd. Also, nobody was wearing "sandals" in either the film or the Crusades—those went out with the Roman Empire. Finally, Fisk's presumed thesis that the merciful Islam of Scott's Saladin is the "real" or truly representative Islam ignores all the death threats that Scott received from Islamic fundamentalists when he was filming the movie in Morocco....

The Pentagon is rapidly expanding its little-noted "anti-terrorist" training program in the nations of Africa's Sahel. From page 11 of the New York Times, June 10:

As Africans Join Iraqi Insurgency, U.S. Counters With Military Training in Their Lands
A growing number of Islamic militants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa are fighting American and Iraqi forces in Iraq, fueling the insurgency with foot soldiers and some financing, American military officials say.

The International Criminal Court at The Hague has launched a war crimes probe into the mass killings in the Darfur region of Sudan. Over the past 2 years at least 180,000 people have died in the region and over 2 million people have been left homeless. Although the Sudanese government has been implicated in the killings, the Bush administration has secretly resumed ties to the government.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that the CIA has been holding secret meetings with Sudanese intelligence chief Major General Salah Abdallah Gosh even though he has been accused by members of Congress of directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur. (Democracy Now!, June 7)

The trial of former Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian began June 6 in Tampa. The government has accused Al-Arian and 8 others of racketeering, conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists. The government alleges that Al-Arian used an Islamic academic think tank and a Palestinian charity to illegally funnel money to the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Until his arrest, Al-Arian was one of the most prominent Palestinian academics and activists in the United States. He was invited to the White House during both the President Clinton and Bush administrations and he campaigned for President Bush during the 2000 election.

Germany’s high court on June 9 upheld the acquittal of Abdelghani Mzoudi, accused of assisting the 9-11 attacks on the US, but German officials said Mzoudi would be deported anyway. Prosecutors had appealed the February 2004 acquittal of the Moroccan student, who was acquainted with three of the 9-11 suicide pilots while they were studying at a university in Hamburg.

Despite the court’s decision to uphold the not-guilty verdict, the Hamburg Interior Ministry has said Mzoudi would be expelled from Germany on the grounds of his “support for a terrorist group

Speaking at Luxembourg on a tour of NATO countries one day after ruling out closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Donald Rumsfeld responded to reporters' questions on the issue: "Our goal is not to obviously have these people, but to have them off the street, but in the hands of the countries of origin, for the most part." However, he said Washington is waiting until Iraqi and Afghan authorities have the ability to handle dangerous prisoners.

"We have some that we would be delighted to release, large numbers as a matter of fact that we would like to give to the Iraqi government. But they lack the appropriate prisons, and the criminal justice system, at the present time to manage them and try them. We've been urging the Afghan government to get itself arranged with the appropriate kinds of prisons and criminal justice system, so that they could take the Afghans off our hands." (VOA, June 9)

President Bush says today he has receieved reports of covert Syrian interference in Lebanon, and the White House charged that it had information that Damascus had drawn up an assassination hit list targeting Lebanese political leaders. "Obviously we're going to follow up on these troubling reports, and we expect the Syrian government to follow up on these troubling reports," Bush told reporters. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said afterward that Washington had received information about a "Syrian hit list targeting key Lebanese public figures of various political and religious persuasions, for assassination."

When Alejandro Dominguez was sworn in as police chief of violence-torn Nuevo Laredo June 8, reporters asked him if he was afraid of dying. "I believe the corrupt officials are the ones who are scared," replied Dominguez, 52, former head of Nuevo Laredo's Chamber of Commerce and a veteran of the federal Attorney General's office. "The only people I work for are the public." Six hours later, Dominguez lay dead, felled by a fusillade of bullets as he left his office in the center of town. He was the seventh--and most senior--police officer killed since January in this city of 500,000 people across the border from Laredo, TX.