A Moving Portrait of Zacarias Moussaoui's Mother, a Damning Portrait of America's Iranian Policies

In the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, Eric Leser notes that France is opposing the death penalty in a short article that basically castigates America's human rights record.

Meanwhile, Piotr Smolar paints a moving portrait of the wannabe terrorist's mother (and therefore, indirectly, of himself), a smallish woman whose daily life, we learn, amounts to "serving a lifetime sentence". Unlike the Americans, it is suggested, the woman whose back is hurting, whose head is aching, who is not eating well, who knows what death is, at least is trying "to understand." "It is not only he [Zacarias] who risks soon being sentenced to life", Aïcha El Wafi warns.

Unless you haven't understood Le Monde's prejudices, the independent daily follows with an editorial on the Iran situation that, while condemning Tehran's attitude, is filled to the brim with expressions proving Uncle Sam's duplicity and shady dealings — "a smokescreen", "George W. Bush's real preoccupations", "Washington… had other priorities", "George W. Bush and his friends have an objective in Iran", "they are using all the means at their disposal", "it's no accident if the United States never participated directly in the negotiations", "John Bolton … uncovers [in the Mullahs' régime] the source of all evil", and my favorite, "the Americans are slowly uncovering their true intentions", coupled with "the Europeans would be wrong to look away from the other stake in this bout of arm-wrestling."

In other words, as terrible as the threat from Iran's nuclear bomb may be (and in spite of Maryam Radjavi's warning), the newspaper of reference is telling us, let no member of the nation of homosexual crusaders (merci à S Stevens) forget that the real danger comes from the Yankee bogeyman.