Terror, Terror, Terror

TIME said India was always at risk because al Qaeda needs a support structure for communications and sanctuary that is offered by Pakistan-based extremists fighting a ‘jihad’ in Kashmir. The magazine informed readers that after the attack on Parliament, security agencies in India are bracing for the next big strike. The Gujarat polls, it said, could serve as ‘another possible impetus’ for an attack.

Finally, Some Truth on Pakistan

ON Pakistan, TIME announced its verdict: ‘‘For now, Pakistan is probably more of an actual terrorist sanctuary than a prime terrorist target.’’ The verdict, after months of sly hedging, has a lot to do with recent revelations of the Pakistan-North Korea nuclear barter that are still rippling through the US media.

THE NEW YORK TIMES described shipments between the two countries that have been ‘brazen’ and ‘in full view of American spy satellites’. The ECONOMIST warned that the alleged Pakistan-North Korea cooperation is ‘‘another reason to sup with General Musharraf with a long spoon.’’

‘Bush No Moron. He’s My Friend’

FROM the Canadian media, a riotous controversy. It began with reports that an aide to Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien had privately called the US president a ‘moron’. Canadian newspapers reported that Francoise Ducros applied the term to Bush during a conversation at the NATO summit. Ducros protested that she did not remember making the comment. And Chretien told reporters that Bush ‘‘is a friend of mine. He’s not a moron at all’’. Over the past few days, Canadian newspapers have been flooded with comment on the fast-talking Ducros’s personal style and US-Canadian relations. In the TORONTO STAR, columnist Thomas Walkom kept a very straight face as he informed readers that according to the International Dictionary of Medicine and Biology, most morons are ‘‘educable and do not require institutionalisation but need some supervision in working at some simple job by which they can become self-sustaining members of society’’.

Also in the TORONTO STAR, Mark Crispin Miller, author of ‘Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder’, had a dark theory. Bushisms, he said, reveal no moron, but someone far more menacing. Miller’s observation: ‘‘He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively… when he’s talking about revenge. It’s only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes’’.

Terror’s Kenyan Safari

THE week ended with the terrible news of the coordinated assaults on Israelis in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. Israelis who had hoped to take advantage of the Hanukkah holiday were engulfed by the familiar horrors of a suicide attack. ‘‘It was like being back home, it really was’’, a survivor told THE NEW YORK TIMES. In the US media, questions were instantly framed: al Qaeda? Would Israel now take a higher profile role in the war on terror? Could that complicate the Bush administration’s plans for military action against Iraq? In the Kenyan media, there was concern that the attack could reverse the gains the tourism industry made in the recent past. Mombasa based COASTWEEK displayed a message from the Kenya Tourist Board in Nairobi: ‘Kenya continues to operate as usual’ it said.