veiled4allah: various notes

Two quick hits.

William Arkin on the reality of Bush's NSA spying:

Come on. The government is not just repeating the targeting of political opponents a la J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. It is not picking out a Seymour Hersh or a Cindy Sheehan to find their links to foreign influences nor seeking to ruin their lives by developing incriminating evidence on them. I know I sound like some Fox news watching, flag waiving, gun toting, Cappuccino hater defending the national security state.

The New York Times and the government may not want to say the obvious, that by and large, it is Muslims in America who are being monitored in the 9/11 Order. It is not the liberal or the literary in the back of the New York City taxicab that is the target. It is the driver.

It's strange that liberals sometimes seem to forget this point and suggest everybody but Muslims as likely victims of the "9/11 Order".

From Yemen, a woman is planning to run for president:

As a recent Arab women's conference came to a close, Sumayah Ali Raja, chair of the Yemen-French Forum, announced she would run in the September 2006 presidential elections. But even her supporters are only cautiously optimistic, pointing to the many cultural obstacles women in politics face in an Arab country. Raja will be the first woman to run for president of Yemen. She said in her address to more than 300 conference participants from the Arab world, Europe and the United States that her candidacy would help all Yemeni women attain their legal and constitutional rights.

"My candidacy will increase the participation of women in different fields. My nomination will also improve women's political role in the country," said Raja.

She called upon the Yemeni political parties and civil society organisations, particularly women's groups, to support her.

Opening the conference "Women's Rights in the Arab World: from words to deeds", Prime Minister Abdul-Qader Ba-Jammal encouraged women to fight for their rights, pointing out that Yemen was a country of queens, referring to Queen Bilqis (also known as the Queen of Sheba) in 530 AD and Queen Arwa in 1065.

The prime minister promised that his government would take the conference's recommendations into consideration, and vowed compliance with all international conventions ratified by Yemen regarding women.