Religious Visions and Croatian Nationalism

The arrest of the three Bosnian Croat political figures, and the earlier raid on the Hercegovacka Banka, lends ongoing support to the contention by Phillip J. Konzer and his non-profit organization, the Kronzer Foundation, that the Medjugorje devotion is funneling millions - if not billions - of dollars through money laundering facilities to a series of highly questionable activities.

9/11: The Weavers of Memory

The fall of the World Trade Center was a crucial moment in American history, one which I missed because it was at the same time a crucial moment in my personal history -- I simply didn't share my countrymen's experience, watching the thing over and over on their televisions, talking it over and over on their telephones, nursing fantasies of grandiose revenge. My own experience I have written of elsewhere.

We do not often reflect that the attack was a crucial event in Afghan history, one which they remember as they remember much else, weaving it into carpets. Carpets you can see and buy at a weekend flea market in Brooklyn's Park Slope.

Perhaps some sunny Saturday I shall take a subway down there...