Sunday’s N.Y. Times had a front-page article titled “Al Qaeda Sees History Fly By.”  This article is so naïve that it makes me want to cancel my subscription.  I suppose the true culprits are the editors who let such an affront to good journalism make it to the Times, let alone its front page.  What this article is referring to, of course, is the idea that all the uprisings across the Arab world are generated by ordinary people who have become fed up with authoritarian rule.  Al Qaeda has not been present in this process.  So far.  And that’s the problem.  What’s naïve is the foolish thought that they won’t be.

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Before Libya and their insane and murderous dictator started grabbing all the headlines, the Pakistani government’s treatment of Mr. Raymond Davis was news.  First, the media in our country lamented that the Pakistanis arrested someone with diplomatic immunity.  Second, we suddenly saw an about face when reporters discovered that Mr. Davis is really a contractor with the C.I.A.  To these mentally challenged members of the Fourth Estate, I say: so what?  Nearly every embassy and consulate of every industrialized nation maintains spies working undercover as diplomats.

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The events that took place in Arizona on Saturday offer yet another datum for the experimental evidence that supports the thesis of my title.  That is an abstract statement of scientific fact.  On the human level, American’s infatuation with guns leads to personal tragedies that affect survivors, friends and relatives of victims and survivors, and the local communities where shootings take place.  On one hand, we relish violence in our TV shows, movies, and video games—it makes villains more evil, allows us to empathize with the victims, and glorifies the hero who meets violence with violence, and wins—all the better if all the violence is directly related to Sigsauers, Glocks, Berettas and Uzis.  On the other, this fictional tradition makes us thick-skinned about violence, especially gun violence, in real life.

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