Attack on a War Critic, John Walker's Hometown, College Condemns the War

And now the most intriguing two minutes in television, the latest footnotes to America's war on terrorism.

A prominent British journalist and harsh critic of the war in Afghanistan was attacked and beaten within an inch of his life in a Pakistani border village filled with Afghan refugees.

Robert Fisk, who writes for the leftist London newspaper the Independent, is recovering from facial, head and hand injuries incurred at the hands of a mob who gathered after his car broke down. But Fisk, who has described the U.S. and British war in Afghanistan as "slaughter" involving "legally sanctioned death squads" does not blame his attackers, writing, "I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees...I would have done just the same, to Robert Fisk or any other Westerner I could find."

Reporting from John Walker's home town of Fairfax, in fabled Marin county, just north of San Francisco, the Boston Globe found that in that community, population 6,000,  "One can study Native American religion, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddism, Sufism, Rastafarianism, voodoo, Islam and everything in between. Only 12 percent of residents attend traditional churches." While Walker's father was a Catholic, the Globe quotes one of Walker's contemporaries, a man with a nose ring who works on an organic farm as saying most kids do not end up adopting their parents religion.

Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., has voted overwhelmingly – students, faculty and staff – to condemn the war on terrorism as "symptomatic of the racism of American society." A resolution passed last week by a vote of 693 to 121 calls U.S. humanitarian relief efforts "token and scattered" and says the U.S. is to blame for blocking international relief efforts. College President Robert Prince said he favored the debate on the matter, but disagreed with parts of the statement, so he abstained.

Also, from the world of American education, in Lake Worth, Fla., the Santa Luces High School girls basketball team was beaten by Wellington High 67 to 11. Afterward, the coach was fired. The winning coach, Teresa Krellner, who said the school principal told her she had embarrassed the school by running up the score. Krellner denied it, noting she had played her starters only sparingly and the opposing coach said he didn't feel the score had been run up.