11/2 - Bruce Feiler

• Reference to Religious Controversies. Stephen references some religious controversies while discussing the supposed fatwa for his comments about Ramadan. Regarding fatwas (a religious edict), in 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued one calling for Muslims to kill "The Satanic Verses" author Salman Rushdie and his publishers for alleged blasphemy. Muslims did cause the deaths of several people involved in publishing Rushdie's book, but support for the fatwa dwindled over the years. In 1998, Iran's government announced that it would not threaten Rushdie or anyone associated with "The Satanic Verses," though some religious leaders say that the fatwa is irrevocable and a private foundation continued to offer a bounty on Rushdie's life.
  Regarding Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger has acknowledged that he was in the Hitler Youth in 1941 and 1942, when he was a teenager. The New York Times reported on April 21 that historians and Jewish groups saw the pope's wartime record as common to young German men at the time and as having little significance today. Pope Benedict XVI reportedly was involved in Pope John Paul II's apology for the role Catholics played in the Holocaust.
  Regarding Madonna and Judaism, the singer has been criticized for the song "Isaac" on her album "Confessions on a Dance Floor" by some rabbis who said that the son was about a 16h century Jewish mystic, Yitzhak Luria. Madonna reportedly has said that the song is not about Luria and that she did not know who Luria was beforehand.

• Closed Senate Session. The Senate held a closed session on November 1 to discuss the status of a review of the Bush administration's use of intelligence to justify the Iraq war. The Senate Intelligence Committee had agreed in February 2004 to review issues such as whether U.S. government officials' prewar statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were justified, but did not address them in a July 2004 report related to the intelligence community's pre-war assessments (the July 2004 report is on-line here). Following the closed session, senators agreed to have a bipartisan group evaluate the status of the review and report back by November 14.
  Republicans and Democrats have clashed over who has delayed the progress of the report thus far. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas), Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a November 1 statement (on-line here) that some work had been finished long ago, that Democrats had "obstructed" his presentation of this work in a May 17, 2005 meeting, and that Republicans had informed Democratic staff on October 31 that they wanted to conclude the work. Senator Nelson Rockefeller (D-West Virginia), ranking Democratic members of the intelligence committee, said in a November 1 statement (on-line here) that Democrats' questioning of the White House's actions had been "thwarted" and said in a November 2 statement (on-line here) that Roberts' recollection of the May 17 meeting was incorrect. "The important fact that should be known is that no committee member has seen one page of a draft report related to the Phase II investigation into prewar intelligence," Rockefeller said.
  As for Rule 21, the text of that rule is on-line here.

• The Word: Cat. Dogcatradio.com is on-line here. Washington University School of Medicine researchers published a study on November 1 showing that male mice make ultrasonic vocalizations to attract female mice; a press release about this (along with a modified audio example) is on-line here and a PDF of the study is on-line here.

• I Called It. The New York Times story Stephen refers to is a November 1, 2005 story about Wal-Mart's efforts to respond to criticisms of the company, including a "war room" such as political campaigns use. Wal-Mart has taken other steps to counter negative publicity about its business practices, such as placing full-page ads in newspapers earlier this year and creating a new promotional website, www.walmartfacts.com, on-line here. A new documentary criticizing Wal-Mart premieres in movie theaters and on DVD in November; information about that is on-line here.

posted by Stephen Lee @ 11/03/2005 09:44:00 AM