March 8, 2006
The Washington Times
Denial is an often useful innate human trait. Few of us would be able to function in the present if we did not put out of mind many unpleasant realities -- such as our inevitable death. The Woody Allen character in the movie "Annie Hall" stated the comic extreme version of not using the denial mechanism when, as a child he refused to do his homework because in 5 billion years the sun would explode, "so, what's the use?"
But when a person, or a society, denies emerging or imminent dangers, the peace of mind it gains will be extremely short term, while the harm may be sustained or fatal.
Most of the world today not only is in denial concerning the truly appalling likely consequences of the rise of radical Islam, it often refuses to even accept unambiguous evidence of its existence.
The latest minor example of the latter is occurring at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As has been generally reported, an Iranian Muslim student drove a jeep into a crowd of students, causing only minor injuries. He turned himself in and informed the police and the media that he was trying to kill the students to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world."
Neither the university nor most of the media has been willing to characterize this event as a terrorist attempt by a radical Muslim. Mr. Colmes, on "Hannity and Colmes" seemed to express genuine puzzlement as to why it mattered whether we called it that or merely an act of violence. Similarly, the attack at the Los Angeles International Airport a few years ago was for nine months just called a violent attack, before it was finally characterized by police as a radical Muslim act of terrorism.
I have been in contact with British politicians who tell me that there is increasing radical Muslim street violence in Britain that is explicitly motivated by radical Islam but is not reported or characterized as such. Even in its cleansed versions, I am told, these incidents are being extremely underreported.
In Antwerp last month, according to the reporter Paul Belien, rioting Moroccan "youths" went on a rampage destroying cars and beating up reporters, but the police were instructed not even to stop them or arrest them. According to an anonymous policeman, "An ambulance was told to switch off its siren because that might provoke the Moroccans." This event, too, was under reported, or not reported at all in American media.
And of course, last October in Paris and other French cities, hundreds of buildings were torched and tens of thousands of cars burned by Muslim "youths" through weeks of rioting, while both the French government and most of the "responsible" experts denied there was any radical Muslim component to the greatest urban violence to hit France since World War. It was all to do with poverty and teenage angst and alienation.
Of course poverty and alienation can't explain the Iranian student in North Carolina. He has just received one of the finest educations available to a privileged American. He reportedly has received advanced degrees in philosophy and psychology from one of our top universities.
The media has pointed out that there is no evidence he was connected to Al Qaeda or another terrorist cell. But that is exactly the point. As I discussed in my book last year, the threat to the West is vastly more than bin Laden and Al Qaeda (although that would be bad enough.)
The greater danger is the ferment in Islam that is generating radical ideas in an unknown, but growing percentage of grass-roots Muslims around the world -- very much including in Europe and, to a currently lesser extent, in the United States.
A nation cannot design (and maintain public support for) a rational response to the danger if the nature and extent of the danger is not identified, widely reported and comprehended.
What are we dealing with? A few maladjusted "youth"? Or a larger and growing number of perfectly well-adjusted men and women -- who just happen to be adjusted to a different set of cultural, religious (or distorted religious) and political values. And does it matter that those values are inimical to western concepts of tolerance, democracy, equality and religious freedom?
The public has the right and vital need to have the events of our time fully and fairly described and reported. But a witch's brew of psychological denial and political correctness is suppressing the institutional voices of government, police, schools, universities and the media when it comes to radical Islam.
As the danger grows but is not publicly described, the public will first be ignorant and fail to demand sufficient remedial action.
But as incidents and rumors are encountered over time, the public mind will inevitably suspect the worst and demand the strongest action. Demagogues will emerge to gratify that vox populi. (The Dubai port deal is a small example of such a process -- although in that incident the threat is real and there are many sincere and rational voices amidst the many demagogues.)
Institutional voices are not being responsible by suppressing honest description of radical Islamic events. Denying the existence of evil (or refusing to be judgmental about it) has never proved a reliable method for defeating it. Hell is presumably filled with souls who didn't understand that point.
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
If I had a hammer, I'd take it to Springsteen's new record
By Paul Mulshine
The Newark Star-Ledger
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Let's do a little thought experiment here. We'll try to think up the most boring CD imaginable.
Barry Manilow does the Bee Gees' greatest hits?
John Tesh covers the Carpenters?
Wait, I've got it: Bruce Springsteen performs a collection of Pete Seeger songs.
Unfortunately, that last one is real. It was announced last week that Springsteen will be releasing an album of Seeger covers next month.
Crank up the coffee pot. Get out the No-Doz. The new Springsteen disc, "We Shall Overcome/ The Seeger Sessions," has the potential to be the single most boring event in rock'n'roll since, let me think for a minute, oh yeah, since Springsteen's last album. That was the one in which he did a bad imitation of the early Bob Dylan. The tour was so unexciting that toward the end the man whose band fills football stadiums was having a hard time filling movie theaters.
The reason for the empty seats was obvious. Springsteen may be a hell of a rocker but he is an awful folk singer. If you doubt this, I invite you to hunt down the Springsteen version of "We Shall Overcome" that is available on the Internet as a preview of the album to come. The first thing you will notice about it is that Springsteen is singing in a sort of generic middle- American drawl. The second thing you will notice is that he is singing out of tune. The effect is to create a false air of authenticity.
Seeger was just as bad in this regard. While posing as a humble hick, Seeger was in fact a Harvard dropout who adopted a folksy air as a means of inflicting his Marxist views on audiences. Dubbed "Stalin's songbird," Seeger sang these lyrics on a 1941 album by the Almanac Singers:
"Franklin D., listen to me,"You ain't a-gonna send me'cross the sea."
The album also included a ditty in which President Roosevelt was decried as an agent of banker J.P. Morgan because of his insistence on aiding the British in their struggle against Uncle Joe Stalin's noble ally. A week after the album's release, however, Hitler invaded Russia. The albums were pulled from the racks and a new one issued calling for the U.S. to get into the war.
I'd pay good money to hear Springsteen cover those Seeger songs. A complete retrospective of Seeger's work would remind Americans of just how thoroughly misguided the so-called Old Left was in the 20th century. Just what did these folkies find so attractive about Marxism? Whatever it was, it didn't carry over into the rock era. Seeger famously resisted Bob Dylan's move to electric guitars at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, saying, "If I had an ax, I'd cut the cable."
The cable remained intact, however, and Dylan escaped the world of fake folk music and entered the electric'60s. This was a wonderful era, an era when even Seeger tunes could be made listenable. The Beach Boys' transcendent version of "Sloop John B" apparently stemmed from Brian Wilson's having heard Seeger mangle the song. And then there was the Byrds' wonderful version of the Seeger song "Turn, Turn, Turn," the lyrics for which Seeger, who lacks any visible talent for either singing or songwriting, lifted directly from the Bible.
If Springsteen were planning that sort of a remake of the Seeger songs, this CD might be worth the effort. All evidence, however, is that Springsteen plans to drone on in that fake hick accent of his. His fans aren't happy. Every Springsteen fan I know dreads the thought of this disc. One wag on a Web site in Minneapolis created a spoof story headlined "Springsteen to release album of TV Song Covers." The article by Steve Perry quotes a bogus Boss telling the listener that the theme from "Green Acres," a 1960s sitcom about a Manhattan couple who moves to the country, "captures a strain of agrarian utopianism that has very deep roots in America."
The funny thing is, it does. The music of sitcoms is every bit as authentic as the "folk" music that emanated from Seeger's crowd. In both cases, you had a bunch of city slickers trying to figure out what goes on in the real America. Seeger at least had the common sense to imitate the true practitioners of authentic folk music -- Appalachian fiddle players, Mississippi Delta blues singers and the like. Springsteen imitates the imitator.
His fans would prefer if he would just imitate himself. The concert video he released with the 30th anniversary CD of "Born to Run" shows the band dressed like a bunch of pimps on a Saturday night. The look was perfect and so was the music.
Back then, Springsteen was supposed to be the future of rock'n'roll. It turned out he was just the present. And now he's the past.
Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist. He may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com.
Book details Bonds' steroid regimen
Updated: March 8, 2006, 1:16 AM ET
ESPN.com news services
Barry Bonds used a vast array of performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids and human growth hormone, for at least five seasons beginning in 1998, according to a book written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters.
Beginning in 1998 with injections in his buttocks of Winstrol, the same steroid used in the 1988 Olympics by Ben Johnson and last year by Rafael Palmeiro, Bonds' massive doping regimen grew more sophisticated as the years went on, according to "Game of Shadows," a book to be released later this month written by reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.
Fainaru-Wada and Williams write that "more than a dozen people either had been told directly that he was using banned drugs, had seen him using the drugs with their own eyes, or had been provided with information that made the conclusion he was doping inescapable," according to a book excerpt in this week's Sports Illustrated.
The book, written in narrative style, is said to be based on more than a thousand pages of documents and interviews with more than 200 people.
Bonds, who testified before a San Francisco federal grand jury looking into steroid use by top athletes, has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds said Tuesday at Giants camp in Arizona that he was not aware of the book. When asked if he would read it, he said, "I won't even look at it. There's no reason to."
"I've read what was reported," Bonds' agent, Jeff Borris, told The Associated Press. "Barry is looking forward to playing this year and the improved health of his knee and being as productive as he's ever been."
Phone messages left by the AP seeking comment from Bonds' attorney and publicist were not immediately returned Tuesday.
"No, no, no, I don't want to talk about Bonds. I'll see you later," San Francisco manager Felipe Alou said after the Giants' 12-3 win over San Diego in Peoria before bolting onto the bus.
Giants general manager Brian Sabean declined to address the book during Tuesday's game, saying, "Just baseball, guys."
"The Giants have a long-standing policy not to comment on this legal matter," said Staci Slaughter, the team's vice president of communications.
Baseball did not ban performance-enhancing drugs until after the 2002 season, though there has long been suspicion that some star players such as Bonds were taking steroids to gain an edge. This book is yet another distraction for Bonds, who has become as accustomed to steroids questions in recent years as he has inquiries related to his powerful left-handed swing.
"I read it, man. I was lost. I didn't even know there were that many kind of steroids," said Cubs manager Dusty Baker, Bonds' former skipper in San Francisco. "I've never even seen steroids. I didn't even know what kind of steroids are steroids other than the kinds you use to fight allergies. ... I was quite surprised with the detail that was in there."
Among the items detailed in the excerpt:
• Bonds was motivated to take performance-enhancing drugs by the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa chase of the single-season home run record in 1998 and he had never taken any before 1998.
• Through research, Bonds developed a deep knowledge of performance enhancers. He even talked, through third parties, to medical authorities who advised him not to use steroids.
• He began with Winstrol after the 1998 season. He also worked out extensively, sometimes spending 12 hours a day at the gym where he met the Weight Guru, who turned out to be Greg Anderson.
• He also took Deca-Durabolin. By 2001, the authors allege, he was using two designer steroids referred to as the Cream and the Clear, as well as insulin, human growth hormone, testosterone decanoate (a fast-acting steroid known as Mexican beans) and trenbolone, a steroid created to improve the muscle quality of cattle. That's the same year Bonds broke McGwire's single-season home run record (70) by belting 73.
• He got the substances from Anderson, his personal trainer who became a Giants employee. Anderson got them from BALCO labs, headed by Victor Conte. Anderson's employment by the Giants irked the team's training staff, according to the excerpt. The Giants also did a background check, discovering that "World Gym was known as a place to score steroids and that Anderson himself was rumored to be a dealer. But the club decided it didn't want to alienate Bonds on this issue, either. The trainers stayed."
• Despite seeing a big change in Bonds' physical appearance, Giants officials did not challenge their star for fear of upsetting him. "The Giants, from owner Peter Magowan to manager Dusty Baker, had no interest in learning whether Bonds was using steroids, either," the excerpt contends. "Although it was illegal to use the drugs without a prescription, baseball had never banned steroids. Besides, by pursuing the issue, the Giants ran the risk of poisoning their relationship with their touchy superstar -- or, worse, of precipitating a drug scandal the year before the opening of their new ballpark, where Bonds was supposed to be the main gate attraction."
• Anderson kept meticulous records on Bonds' program, many of them on a computer. At times, Bonds gulped as many as 20 pills at a time. He also learned to inject himself.
• Bonds had a relationship with Kimberly Bell, a woman he met in the Candlestick Park parking lot in 1994 while he was married. Bonds even put a down payment on a house for Bell in Arizona from monies he made from card-show appearances (and didn't report as income). She claims he later threatened to kill her.
• According to the excerpt, Anderson told an acquaintance who was wearing a wire in 2003 that: "The whole thing is, everything I've been doing, it's all undetectable. The stuff I have, we created it. You can't buy it anywhere else; you can't get it anywhere else. You can take [it] the day of [a drug test], pee, and it comes up clear.
"See, like Marion Jones and them -- it's the same stuff they went to the Olympics with and they test them every f------ week. So that's why I know it works, so that's why I know we're not in trouble. So that's cool."
• Bonds had immunity in grand jury testimony from everything but perjury. He claimed in testimony that he didn't know what Anderson was giving him. "At the end of [the] 2002, 2003 season, when I was going through [a bad period], my dad died of cancer ... I was fatigued, just needed recovery you know, and this guy says, 'Try this cream, try this cream,'" he said. "And Greg came to the ballpark and said, you know, 'This will help you recover.' And he rubbed some cream on my arm ... gave me some flaxseed oil, man. It's like, 'Whatever, dude.'"
Later, Bonds said: "You know me, I'm 39 years old. I'm dealing with pain. All I want is the pain relief, you know? ... I never asked Greg," according to the excerpt. "When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, 'Whatever.' It was in the ballpark ... in front of everybody. I mean, all the reporters, my teammates. I mean, they all saw it. I didn't hide it ... . You know, trainers come up to me and say, 'Hey, Barry, try this.'"
The book is scheduled to be published on March 27.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report
ESPN.com news services
Barry Bonds used a vast array of performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids and human growth hormone, for at least five seasons beginning in 1998, according to a book written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters.
Beginning in 1998 with injections in his buttocks of Winstrol, the same steroid used in the 1988 Olympics by Ben Johnson and last year by Rafael Palmeiro, Bonds' massive doping regimen grew more sophisticated as the years went on, according to "Game of Shadows," a book to be released later this month written by reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams.
Fainaru-Wada and Williams write that "more than a dozen people either had been told directly that he was using banned drugs, had seen him using the drugs with their own eyes, or had been provided with information that made the conclusion he was doping inescapable," according to a book excerpt in this week's Sports Illustrated.
The book, written in narrative style, is said to be based on more than a thousand pages of documents and interviews with more than 200 people.
Bonds, who testified before a San Francisco federal grand jury looking into steroid use by top athletes, has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds said Tuesday at Giants camp in Arizona that he was not aware of the book. When asked if he would read it, he said, "I won't even look at it. There's no reason to."
"I've read what was reported," Bonds' agent, Jeff Borris, told The Associated Press. "Barry is looking forward to playing this year and the improved health of his knee and being as productive as he's ever been."
Phone messages left by the AP seeking comment from Bonds' attorney and publicist were not immediately returned Tuesday.
"No, no, no, I don't want to talk about Bonds. I'll see you later," San Francisco manager Felipe Alou said after the Giants' 12-3 win over San Diego in Peoria before bolting onto the bus.
Giants general manager Brian Sabean declined to address the book during Tuesday's game, saying, "Just baseball, guys."
"The Giants have a long-standing policy not to comment on this legal matter," said Staci Slaughter, the team's vice president of communications.
Baseball did not ban performance-enhancing drugs until after the 2002 season, though there has long been suspicion that some star players such as Bonds were taking steroids to gain an edge. This book is yet another distraction for Bonds, who has become as accustomed to steroids questions in recent years as he has inquiries related to his powerful left-handed swing.
"I read it, man. I was lost. I didn't even know there were that many kind of steroids," said Cubs manager Dusty Baker, Bonds' former skipper in San Francisco. "I've never even seen steroids. I didn't even know what kind of steroids are steroids other than the kinds you use to fight allergies. ... I was quite surprised with the detail that was in there."
Among the items detailed in the excerpt:
• Bonds was motivated to take performance-enhancing drugs by the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa chase of the single-season home run record in 1998 and he had never taken any before 1998.
• Through research, Bonds developed a deep knowledge of performance enhancers. He even talked, through third parties, to medical authorities who advised him not to use steroids.
• He began with Winstrol after the 1998 season. He also worked out extensively, sometimes spending 12 hours a day at the gym where he met the Weight Guru, who turned out to be Greg Anderson.
• He also took Deca-Durabolin. By 2001, the authors allege, he was using two designer steroids referred to as the Cream and the Clear, as well as insulin, human growth hormone, testosterone decanoate (a fast-acting steroid known as Mexican beans) and trenbolone, a steroid created to improve the muscle quality of cattle. That's the same year Bonds broke McGwire's single-season home run record (70) by belting 73.
• He got the substances from Anderson, his personal trainer who became a Giants employee. Anderson got them from BALCO labs, headed by Victor Conte. Anderson's employment by the Giants irked the team's training staff, according to the excerpt. The Giants also did a background check, discovering that "World Gym was known as a place to score steroids and that Anderson himself was rumored to be a dealer. But the club decided it didn't want to alienate Bonds on this issue, either. The trainers stayed."
• Despite seeing a big change in Bonds' physical appearance, Giants officials did not challenge their star for fear of upsetting him. "The Giants, from owner Peter Magowan to manager Dusty Baker, had no interest in learning whether Bonds was using steroids, either," the excerpt contends. "Although it was illegal to use the drugs without a prescription, baseball had never banned steroids. Besides, by pursuing the issue, the Giants ran the risk of poisoning their relationship with their touchy superstar -- or, worse, of precipitating a drug scandal the year before the opening of their new ballpark, where Bonds was supposed to be the main gate attraction."
• Anderson kept meticulous records on Bonds' program, many of them on a computer. At times, Bonds gulped as many as 20 pills at a time. He also learned to inject himself.
• Bonds had a relationship with Kimberly Bell, a woman he met in the Candlestick Park parking lot in 1994 while he was married. Bonds even put a down payment on a house for Bell in Arizona from monies he made from card-show appearances (and didn't report as income). She claims he later threatened to kill her.
• According to the excerpt, Anderson told an acquaintance who was wearing a wire in 2003 that: "The whole thing is, everything I've been doing, it's all undetectable. The stuff I have, we created it. You can't buy it anywhere else; you can't get it anywhere else. You can take [it] the day of [a drug test], pee, and it comes up clear.
"See, like Marion Jones and them -- it's the same stuff they went to the Olympics with and they test them every f------ week. So that's why I know it works, so that's why I know we're not in trouble. So that's cool."
• Bonds had immunity in grand jury testimony from everything but perjury. He claimed in testimony that he didn't know what Anderson was giving him. "At the end of [the] 2002, 2003 season, when I was going through [a bad period], my dad died of cancer ... I was fatigued, just needed recovery you know, and this guy says, 'Try this cream, try this cream,'" he said. "And Greg came to the ballpark and said, you know, 'This will help you recover.' And he rubbed some cream on my arm ... gave me some flaxseed oil, man. It's like, 'Whatever, dude.'"
Later, Bonds said: "You know me, I'm 39 years old. I'm dealing with pain. All I want is the pain relief, you know? ... I never asked Greg," according to the excerpt. "When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, 'Whatever.' It was in the ballpark ... in front of everybody. I mean, all the reporters, my teammates. I mean, they all saw it. I didn't hide it ... . You know, trainers come up to me and say, 'Hey, Barry, try this.'"
The book is scheduled to be published on March 27.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report
Latest revelations seal the deal for Bonds' legacy
By Gene Wojciechowski
ESPN.com
Archive
PHOENIX -- In the end, there is only one question that needs to be asked:
Do you believe Barry Bonds, or the book?
If you believe Bonds, then you believe the third-leading home run hitter in the history of Major League Baseball is the victim of an unrelenting federal and media conspiracy designed to frame him for the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
If you believe the excerpts of "Game of Shadows," then you believe that Bonds and his mind-boggling, bloated numbers of 1998-2004 (he missed most of last season with an injury) are a fraud.
I believe the book. I think Bonds is -- or was -- a human Walgreens, a grotesque and insulting example of better baseball through chemistry. And I think he should slither away, joining Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro in forced baseball exile.
Bonds is finished. He might play again, but there is only a chalk outline left around his integrity and home run totals. And the only way he gets into Cooperstown is if he spends the $14.50 for a Hall of Fame admission ticket.
Winstrol. Deca-Durabolin. Insulin. Testosterone decanoate. Human growth hormones. Norbolethone. Trenbolone. Clomid. These are the substances and steroids Bonds is alleged to have injected or ingested. They are the medicine cabinet of a cheater.
This sign was up in September of last season. Expect more of the same.
Clomid is prescribed to women for infertility. Trenbolone enhances the muscle tone of cattle.
Deca-Durabolin is a medication used in the treatment of kidney failure-related amnesia. And yet, write "Game of Shadows" co-authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, Bonds did so with regularity and without remorse.
Bonds always has been a drama king. He was insufferable in high school, insufferable at Arizona State, and insufferable now. But his statistics didn't come with a personality rating. Love him or loathe him, you simply couldn't argue with his talent. He arrived at the big leagues as a prodigy, a lithe, five-tool player. He will leave as a cautionary tale, an asterisk wearing a San Francisco Giants uniform.
How can you not read the work of the two San Francisco Chronicle writers and not at least wonder if Bonds knew about the working end of a syringe. Either you're naïve or a member of the Bonds family.
When asked Tuesday at the Giants' Scottsdale facility if he was aware of the contents of "Game of Shadows," Bonds told reporters, "Nope. I won't even look at it. For what? I won't even look at it. There's no need to."
Here's guessing the Feds will. So will the IRS. So will his ex-wife's divorce attorney. So will MLB commissioner Bud Selig, though he was conveniently in Milwaukee on Tuesday, despite Team USA making its World Baseball Classic debut here at Chase Field. An MLB spokesperson said Selig hadn't seen the book and had no comment regarding the book's allegations.
Then again, what can Selig do other than secretly root that Fainaru-Wada and Williams got it right? In so many ways MLB, the owners and the Players Association share part of the blame for creating this situation. For years they were helpless -- or clueless -- when it came to addressing the issue of performance-enhancing drugs.
Faced with a choice of remaining true to the game, or becoming what he once despised, Bonds allegedly chose home runs over ethics. But even as his numbers increased almost exponentially, as kayak-gridlock became commonplace at McCovey's Cove, as the countdown to baseball immortality became more pronounced, there was always an uneasiness about Bonds' accomplishments. They didn't seem, for the lack of a better word, natural.
Bonds has his defenders -- lot's of them, including Derrek Lee, the Chicago Cubs All-Star first baseman who is everything Bonds isn't: a player who handles himself with grace and dignity. Lee hadn't heard of the book excerpt until he was asked about it after Team USA's 2-0 victory against Mexico.
"What's the story?" he said. "I don't know the story."
It was explained: detailed allegations of performance-enhancing drug use by Bonds.
Lee dismissed the latest revelations. It wasn't a story, he said. Bonds has never been caught using steroids. Leave him alone.
"People have been alleging him forever," Lee said.
Lee believes Bonds. I don't, and never will. I don't believe in coincidences, or physical transformations so stark that you do a double-take. I don't believe the numbers of 2001.
The tragedy of it all is that Bonds didn't need the alleged chemical boost. His legacy was secure. His Hall of Fame plaque was a done deal. It didn't matter if we thought he was a jerk because his statistics were so overpowering. No longer.
In recent years, perception was reality when it came to Bonds and the subject of steroid use. But this latest excerpt, complete with his smarmy grand jury testimony, convinces me reality is reality when applied to Bonds.
Earlier Tuesday afternoon, about an hour or so before Team USA's game, Alex Rodriguez was asked about the death of Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett, who died a day earlier from complications stemming from a major stroke.
"One of the saddest days in baseball for me," said A-Rod.
I felt the same way Tuesday. This time it was the death of a reputation.
Barry Bonds, rest in peace.
Gene Wojciechowski is the senior national columnist for ESPN.com. You can contact him at gene.wojciechowski@espn3.com.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Joe Kaufman: Tar Heel Terror
Joe Kaufman
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 7, 2006
On Friday, Iranian-born Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a 22 year-old UNC graduate, tore through a lunchtime crowd at one of the university’s popular gathering spots with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, hitting nine people of which six were hospitalized with injuries.
Taheri-azar was arrested and charged with nine counts, each of attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon. According to Derech Poarch, the chief of the university police department, the attacker told investigators that he wanted to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.” Upon entering his apartment, a paperback copy of the Quran was found in Taheri-azar’s room, along with a book calling for the United States to “confront state sponsors of terrorism.” He was shown, on news video footage, handcuffed and being led into a car sporting a giant grin.
At the court hearing on Monday, that same smile was ingrained on his face. Like Zacarias Moussaoui, whose trial coincided with Taheri-azar’s hearing, Taheri-azar stated that he wanted to represent himself. And like Moussaoui, who proudly proclaimed, “I’m Al-Qaeda,” Taheri-azar used the courtroom forum to voice his Islamist ideology. Clad in orange jumpsuit and leg shackles, he stated, “I am thankful you are going to hear this trial to learn more about the will of Allah, the creator.” And in response to a reporter’s question, he confirmed that, “Yes,” it was his intention to murder those he hit with the SUV he had just rented. In the 911 call he had made after the attack, he told the operator that he did this “to punish the government of the United States.”
The question of whether or not he was acting alone has been raised. To this effect, eyes have been focused on the university’s Muslim Students Association (MSA), which was recently involved in a protest of the UNC campus newspaper’s publishing of a Mohammed cartoon. After the incident, the MSA quickly issued a press release distancing itself from Taheri-azar and condemning what it called a “hit and run incident.” Later, MSA’s President, Uzma Khan, declined to comment.
In the release, the MSA admitted that Taheri-azar had made a “few appearances” with its group but said that he was not a member. As such, the MSA likened him to “one disturbed individual from the beliefs of the Muslim community as a whole.”
According to the MSA press release, the appearances Taheri-azar made with the group were done in an on-campus “prayer room,” reserved by the MSA. Yet, this bit of information is contradicted on the group’s website. Under the heading “Quick Facts [FAQ],” the UNC-MSA homepage answers the question, “Where is the prayer room located?” The link doesn’t lead one to information about an on-campus entity, but instead, it takes one to the homepage of the Islamic Center of Raleigh, also known as the Islamic Association of Raleigh (IAR).
IAR was established in 1985 by members of the MSA and the Islamic Association of North Carolina (IANC), with seed money from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. That same year, upon invitation by the MSA of N.C. State (where Sami al-Arian was at the time), Mohammed Bajanonie, a Syrian-born teacher, became IAR’s “full time” imam, as he still is today.
Numerous speeches made by Bajanonie are found on IAR’s website. Included in these speeches are his views about Jews, Christians, and jihad. He states the following:
* “Imam Muslim reported that the prophet (S.A.W.) said: ‘The first person, whose case will be adjudicated on the Day of Judgment, will be a martyr…He will say: I carried on Jihad (fighting) in the cause till I was martyred….’” (from ‘How the Judgment is Established in the Day of Judgment’)
* “From the transgression, the oppression, and the corruption of the Jews was hindering many from Allah’s Way and dealing with riba [usury/interest] while it is forbidden.” (from ‘Dealing with Riba is one of the Major Sins’)
* “This meaning is emphasized by the saying of the prophet (S.A.W.) when he said, ‘By whom my soul is in His hand, if one, Jew or Christian, heard of me, then died and he/she did not believe in that which I was sent with, then they are from the dwellers of Hell fire.’” (from ‘Definition of the Word Deen & the Word Islam’)
* “And also as Allah (S.W.T.) says…‘You who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya’ [friends], they are but Auliya’ to each other. And he amongst you takes them as Auliya’ then surely he is one of them. Verily Allah guides not a people unjust.’” (from ‘Iman is the Tie in the Muslim Society’)
* “And it is not allowed at all for any Muslim to say to them [Jews and Christians] that you have the truthful Deen [authority], and you are like us; both of us belong to Ibrahim [Abrahamic religions], because in doing this, he will be rejecting the words of Allah to them (‘You have nothing’), and he will be rejecting Allah.” (from ‘The Truth Has to Be Conveyed Completely’)
While the North Carolina MSA’s association with IAR is troubling, the problem with the group goes much further.
On October 12, 2005, the MSA brought Radwan Masmoudi, the founder and President of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID), to the UNC campus. The event was titled, “The Future of Democracy in the Muslim World.” The CSID was created by leaders from the American Muslim Council (AMC). AMC leaders have been known to praise Hamas and Hezbollah. Masmoudi’s leadership made Kamran Bokhari, the U.S. representative for the defunct British extremist organization Al-Muhajiroun, a fellow at CSID. (The BBC announced Al-Muhajiroun“wants this country to become an Islamic state.”)
On February 23-24, the MSA invited two of the most radical Islamic speakers in the United States to address its “Special Friday Youth Session” and “Saturday Marriage Session.”
Mohamed Rida Beshir was featured in the first event. Beshir is an advisor for Islam Online, a website that showcases live interviews with leaders of Hamas. He is a member of the editorial board and a contributing writer for MAS’s magazine, The American Muslim, which has written that Palestinian “[m]artyr operations are not suicide and should not be deemed as unjustifiable.” He has held various positions with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) (including writing for ISNA’s bi-monthly publication, Islamic Horizons) and the Muslim American Society (MAS), two groups connected to the virulent Muslim Brotherhood. Beshir, as well, has authored articles for The Message International, a publication put out by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a group that scholars state has ties to Pakistan’s version of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Featured in the second event was Amir Abdul Malik Ali. The following are quotes attributed to him (as compiled by Discover the Network):
* “Stay conscious and ask Allah to raise the Muslims and give us victory over the disbeliever.”
* “When it's all over, the only one standing is gonna be us.”
* “We must implement Islam as a totality,” in which “Allah controls every place – the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress.”
* “The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we're gonna check 'em.”
* “Sooner or later, today's Muslim students will be the parents of Muslim children. And they should be militants.”
* “[T]he Israelis were ‘in-control’ of 9-11,” which “was staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world.”
* “You [Jews] are walking into all the traps we want you to walk into. You hijacked American foreign policy.”
* “Neo-cons are all Zionist Jews.”
* Zionism is a mixture of “chosen people-ness and white supremacy.”
* Israelis ought to return “to Germany, to Poland, to Russia. The Germans should hook y'all up. You [Israelis] should go back to Germany.”
On February 16th, the MSA, in coordination with UNC faculty and Campus Y, a left wing group that features anti-Israel speakers, hosted a vigil and educational dialogue event on university grounds. According to the MSA, the affair was held to shed light on the controversy surrounding the Danish cartoons. The vigil and dialogue event put on by the MSA was entitled “Extinguishing Ignorance with Knowledge.” Could this have been the event that put Taheri-azar over the edge?
Either way, it becomes clear that the MSA in general, and the UNC chapter in particular, appear to have deep and troubling ties to extremist Islam. UNC college students may have suffered the consequences last Friday.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of Americans Against Hate and the host of The Politics of Terrorism radio show.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 7, 2006
On Friday, Iranian-born Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a 22 year-old UNC graduate, tore through a lunchtime crowd at one of the university’s popular gathering spots with a Jeep Grand Cherokee, hitting nine people of which six were hospitalized with injuries.
Taheri-azar was arrested and charged with nine counts, each of attempted first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon. According to Derech Poarch, the chief of the university police department, the attacker told investigators that he wanted to “avenge the deaths or murders of Muslims around the world.” Upon entering his apartment, a paperback copy of the Quran was found in Taheri-azar’s room, along with a book calling for the United States to “confront state sponsors of terrorism.” He was shown, on news video footage, handcuffed and being led into a car sporting a giant grin.
At the court hearing on Monday, that same smile was ingrained on his face. Like Zacarias Moussaoui, whose trial coincided with Taheri-azar’s hearing, Taheri-azar stated that he wanted to represent himself. And like Moussaoui, who proudly proclaimed, “I’m Al-Qaeda,” Taheri-azar used the courtroom forum to voice his Islamist ideology. Clad in orange jumpsuit and leg shackles, he stated, “I am thankful you are going to hear this trial to learn more about the will of Allah, the creator.” And in response to a reporter’s question, he confirmed that, “Yes,” it was his intention to murder those he hit with the SUV he had just rented. In the 911 call he had made after the attack, he told the operator that he did this “to punish the government of the United States.”
The question of whether or not he was acting alone has been raised. To this effect, eyes have been focused on the university’s Muslim Students Association (MSA), which was recently involved in a protest of the UNC campus newspaper’s publishing of a Mohammed cartoon. After the incident, the MSA quickly issued a press release distancing itself from Taheri-azar and condemning what it called a “hit and run incident.” Later, MSA’s President, Uzma Khan, declined to comment.
In the release, the MSA admitted that Taheri-azar had made a “few appearances” with its group but said that he was not a member. As such, the MSA likened him to “one disturbed individual from the beliefs of the Muslim community as a whole.”
According to the MSA press release, the appearances Taheri-azar made with the group were done in an on-campus “prayer room,” reserved by the MSA. Yet, this bit of information is contradicted on the group’s website. Under the heading “Quick Facts [FAQ],” the UNC-MSA homepage answers the question, “Where is the prayer room located?” The link doesn’t lead one to information about an on-campus entity, but instead, it takes one to the homepage of the Islamic Center of Raleigh, also known as the Islamic Association of Raleigh (IAR).
IAR was established in 1985 by members of the MSA and the Islamic Association of North Carolina (IANC), with seed money from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. That same year, upon invitation by the MSA of N.C. State (where Sami al-Arian was at the time), Mohammed Bajanonie, a Syrian-born teacher, became IAR’s “full time” imam, as he still is today.
Numerous speeches made by Bajanonie are found on IAR’s website. Included in these speeches are his views about Jews, Christians, and jihad. He states the following:
* “Imam Muslim reported that the prophet (S.A.W.) said: ‘The first person, whose case will be adjudicated on the Day of Judgment, will be a martyr…He will say: I carried on Jihad (fighting) in the cause till I was martyred….’” (from ‘How the Judgment is Established in the Day of Judgment’)
* “From the transgression, the oppression, and the corruption of the Jews was hindering many from Allah’s Way and dealing with riba [usury/interest] while it is forbidden.” (from ‘Dealing with Riba is one of the Major Sins’)
* “This meaning is emphasized by the saying of the prophet (S.A.W.) when he said, ‘By whom my soul is in His hand, if one, Jew or Christian, heard of me, then died and he/she did not believe in that which I was sent with, then they are from the dwellers of Hell fire.’” (from ‘Definition of the Word Deen & the Word Islam’)
* “And also as Allah (S.W.T.) says…‘You who believe, take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya’ [friends], they are but Auliya’ to each other. And he amongst you takes them as Auliya’ then surely he is one of them. Verily Allah guides not a people unjust.’” (from ‘Iman is the Tie in the Muslim Society’)
* “And it is not allowed at all for any Muslim to say to them [Jews and Christians] that you have the truthful Deen [authority], and you are like us; both of us belong to Ibrahim [Abrahamic religions], because in doing this, he will be rejecting the words of Allah to them (‘You have nothing’), and he will be rejecting Allah.” (from ‘The Truth Has to Be Conveyed Completely’)
While the North Carolina MSA’s association with IAR is troubling, the problem with the group goes much further.
On October 12, 2005, the MSA brought Radwan Masmoudi, the founder and President of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID), to the UNC campus. The event was titled, “The Future of Democracy in the Muslim World.” The CSID was created by leaders from the American Muslim Council (AMC). AMC leaders have been known to praise Hamas and Hezbollah. Masmoudi’s leadership made Kamran Bokhari, the U.S. representative for the defunct British extremist organization Al-Muhajiroun, a fellow at CSID. (The BBC announced Al-Muhajiroun“wants this country to become an Islamic state.”)
On February 23-24, the MSA invited two of the most radical Islamic speakers in the United States to address its “Special Friday Youth Session” and “Saturday Marriage Session.”
Mohamed Rida Beshir was featured in the first event. Beshir is an advisor for Islam Online, a website that showcases live interviews with leaders of Hamas. He is a member of the editorial board and a contributing writer for MAS’s magazine, The American Muslim, which has written that Palestinian “[m]artyr operations are not suicide and should not be deemed as unjustifiable.” He has held various positions with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) (including writing for ISNA’s bi-monthly publication, Islamic Horizons) and the Muslim American Society (MAS), two groups connected to the virulent Muslim Brotherhood. Beshir, as well, has authored articles for The Message International, a publication put out by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a group that scholars state has ties to Pakistan’s version of the Muslim Brotherhood, Jamaat-e-Islami.
Featured in the second event was Amir Abdul Malik Ali. The following are quotes attributed to him (as compiled by Discover the Network):
* “Stay conscious and ask Allah to raise the Muslims and give us victory over the disbeliever.”
* “When it's all over, the only one standing is gonna be us.”
* “We must implement Islam as a totality,” in which “Allah controls every place – the home, the classroom, the science lab, the halls of Congress.”
* “The enemies of Islam know that when we come back to power we're gonna check 'em.”
* “Sooner or later, today's Muslim students will be the parents of Muslim children. And they should be militants.”
* “[T]he Israelis were ‘in-control’ of 9-11,” which “was staged to give an excuse to wage war against Muslims around the world.”
* “You [Jews] are walking into all the traps we want you to walk into. You hijacked American foreign policy.”
* “Neo-cons are all Zionist Jews.”
* Zionism is a mixture of “chosen people-ness and white supremacy.”
* Israelis ought to return “to Germany, to Poland, to Russia. The Germans should hook y'all up. You [Israelis] should go back to Germany.”
On February 16th, the MSA, in coordination with UNC faculty and Campus Y, a left wing group that features anti-Israel speakers, hosted a vigil and educational dialogue event on university grounds. According to the MSA, the affair was held to shed light on the controversy surrounding the Danish cartoons. The vigil and dialogue event put on by the MSA was entitled “Extinguishing Ignorance with Knowledge.” Could this have been the event that put Taheri-azar over the edge?
Either way, it becomes clear that the MSA in general, and the UNC chapter in particular, appear to have deep and troubling ties to extremist Islam. UNC college students may have suffered the consequences last Friday.
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of Americans Against Hate and the host of The Politics of Terrorism radio show.
Thomas Sowell: Cathedrals and Faith
March 7, 2006
Thomas Sowell
In the grand scheme of things, the recent resignation of Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, was a small episode. But its implications are large and reach beyond Harvard -- and well beyond the academic world.
David Riesman said that we are living in the cathedrals of learning, without the faith that built those cathedrals. We are also living in a free society without the faith that built that society -- and without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it.
The faith came first. Centuries ago, farmers and others scattered throughout New England made whatever small contributions they could, whether in money or in produce, to help build a little college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Today Harvard University is renowned but it has lost the sense of dedication that built it back in 1636. The faculty run the university, as Lawrence Summers has painfully discovered, and they run it in their own narrow self-interest.
A full professor at Harvard gets no personal pay-off for teaching undergraduates. That can be left to the junior faculty and graduate students. Research is where the money and the prestige are.
Summers wanted professors not only to teach undergraduates but to teach introductory courses in a structured curriculum and to stop giving out so many A's that 90 percent of the students graduate with honors.
Giving out A's wholesale saves the faculty's time that would otherwise be taken up by students wanting to know why they received B's, C's, or D's. That time is now available for research, writing and other things with a bigger personal pay-off for the faculty.
Teaching introductory courses in a structured curriculum can provide undergraduates with a far better education than the current cafeteria style of student choices among a hodgepodge of whatever courses happen to be available. But teaching introductory courses in a structured curriculum is also very time-consuming, which is why so few colleges really have a curriculum any more.
It is far easier to teach whatever narrow subject in which a professor is already doing research. Thus in some colleges there may be a course on the history of motion pictures but no course on the history of Britain or Germany.
Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious colleges in the land without a clue as to what the Second World War or the Cold War was about. At Harvard, chances are nine out of ten that such uninformed students can graduate with honors.
No college and no society can survive solely on the narrow self-interest of each individual. Somebody has to sacrifice some of his own interests for the greater good of the institution or society serving others.
In crisis, some have to put their lives on the line, as fireman, policemen and people in the military still do. But, for that, you have to believe that the institution and the society are worthy of your sacrifices.
We have now been through at least two generations of constant denigration of American society, two generations in which cheap glory could be gained by flouting rules and mocking values.
Is it surprising that we seem to have dwindling numbers of people willing to take responsibility and make sacrifices to preserve the social framework that makes our survival and advancement possible? Harvard is just one small example.
There was a time when being at war meant accepting a great weight of responsibility, even among politicians. After Wendell Willkie waged a tough presidential election campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, winning more votes than any Republican ever had before, nevertheless after it was all over, he became FDR's personal envoy to Winston Churchill.
In the midst of war today, we see former presidents and defeated presidential candidates telling the world how wrong we are -- sometimes collecting big bucks in foreign countries for doing so -- and members of Congress playing demagogic party politics with national security.
We still have the cathedral of freedom but how long will it last without the faith?
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
Thomas Sowell
In the grand scheme of things, the recent resignation of Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, was a small episode. But its implications are large and reach beyond Harvard -- and well beyond the academic world.
David Riesman said that we are living in the cathedrals of learning, without the faith that built those cathedrals. We are also living in a free society without the faith that built that society -- and without the conviction and dedication needed to sustain it.
The faith came first. Centuries ago, farmers and others scattered throughout New England made whatever small contributions they could, whether in money or in produce, to help build a little college in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Today Harvard University is renowned but it has lost the sense of dedication that built it back in 1636. The faculty run the university, as Lawrence Summers has painfully discovered, and they run it in their own narrow self-interest.
A full professor at Harvard gets no personal pay-off for teaching undergraduates. That can be left to the junior faculty and graduate students. Research is where the money and the prestige are.
Summers wanted professors not only to teach undergraduates but to teach introductory courses in a structured curriculum and to stop giving out so many A's that 90 percent of the students graduate with honors.
Giving out A's wholesale saves the faculty's time that would otherwise be taken up by students wanting to know why they received B's, C's, or D's. That time is now available for research, writing and other things with a bigger personal pay-off for the faculty.
Teaching introductory courses in a structured curriculum can provide undergraduates with a far better education than the current cafeteria style of student choices among a hodgepodge of whatever courses happen to be available. But teaching introductory courses in a structured curriculum is also very time-consuming, which is why so few colleges really have a curriculum any more.
It is far easier to teach whatever narrow subject in which a professor is already doing research. Thus in some colleges there may be a course on the history of motion pictures but no course on the history of Britain or Germany.
Students can graduate from some of the most prestigious colleges in the land without a clue as to what the Second World War or the Cold War was about. At Harvard, chances are nine out of ten that such uninformed students can graduate with honors.
No college and no society can survive solely on the narrow self-interest of each individual. Somebody has to sacrifice some of his own interests for the greater good of the institution or society serving others.
In crisis, some have to put their lives on the line, as fireman, policemen and people in the military still do. But, for that, you have to believe that the institution and the society are worthy of your sacrifices.
We have now been through at least two generations of constant denigration of American society, two generations in which cheap glory could be gained by flouting rules and mocking values.
Is it surprising that we seem to have dwindling numbers of people willing to take responsibility and make sacrifices to preserve the social framework that makes our survival and advancement possible? Harvard is just one small example.
There was a time when being at war meant accepting a great weight of responsibility, even among politicians. After Wendell Willkie waged a tough presidential election campaign against Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, winning more votes than any Republican ever had before, nevertheless after it was all over, he became FDR's personal envoy to Winston Churchill.
In the midst of war today, we see former presidents and defeated presidential candidates telling the world how wrong we are -- sometimes collecting big bucks in foreign countries for doing so -- and members of Congress playing demagogic party politics with national security.
We still have the cathedral of freedom but how long will it last without the faith?
Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate
Dennis Byrne: When Illegal Means Illegal
March 7, 2006
Dennis Byrne
The Chicago Tribune
As the Senate is entering the great debate over illegal immigration, it's imperative to examine the frequent claim of "immigrants' rights."
Bluntly said, people who are illegally in this country possess only those civil rights that we grant to them.
Yes, they have human rights, such as the familiar life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But civil rights, by most definitions, are protections and privileges of freedom given by nation's laws to its citizens.
This, of course, flies in the face of the contemporary confusion about "immigrants' rights," which proclaims that anyone who lands on U.S. soil, by whatever means, has the same civil right to obtain a driver's license, get a subsidized mortgage or any of the other benefits that are typically granted by law to citizens.
An illegal immigrant can claim the protections of human rights, which cannot be voided by any governmental action. But--and this will startle and anger some--an "undocumented" immigrant has no claim to equal treatment.
This may sound like a lot of philosophical gibberish, but it has some very real implications. For example, the teen who was in America illegally and who was denied admission to an Elmwood Park school has a human right to an education. But whether she has a civil right to attend that school, using our public money, at this time, should be a matter for the citizens of the United States and Elmwood Park to decide. Same goes for issuing driver's licenses or providing mortgage assistance.
I might sound like a squirrelly policy wonk for saying it, but if the citizens of the United States don't get to decide who qualifies for citizenship and who benefits from government programs, then citizenship is made meaningless by denying them control over their laws and their spending. So, Americans are properly offended by the bald-faced attempt by Mexico President Vicente Fox and 10 other Latin American leaders to prescribe their solution to the vast problems caused by the illegal presence of 11 million people in our country and a non-functional border.
While we're trying to set some ground rules in this difficult debate, it would help to clarify some language. A foreigner (yes, that's the proper name for someone here from another country) who can't produce his documents to demonstrate his legal status in the United States is different from a foreigner who has no documents because he is here illegally. Thus, "undocumented immigrant" is an imprecise substitute for "illegal immigrant."
It is yet another loss for proper usage in the never-ending skirmish over political correctness. And while the use of "illegal immigrant" may cause offense, it hardly rises to the offensive heights caused by labeling one side of a legitimate debate "nativists" or "xenophobes."
Also, as we enter this debate, it's wise to bring up what we've learned from the past, since we've been around this corner before. In 1986, we conducted this same debate and the "solution" then was to grant amnesty to about 2.7 million illegal immigrants. Then, amnesty advocates said we need grant it "just this once," and that better enforcement--mostly going after employers who hire illegal immigrants--would solve the problem. That amnesty didn't stop the illegal flow across our border, and enforcement--especially by the Bush administration--has been a joke.
Last year, 86 members of Congress felt compelled to urge President Bush to enforce three dozen immigration laws that they said the administration had ignored.
Amnesty wasn't part of a border-security bill the House passed last year. But the Senate won't escape a debate over amnesty, especially with President Bush pushing for a "guest worker" program. At least four bills are up for Senate consideration, but as far as I can tell, none of them would immediately round up 11 million people and ship them "back." Nonetheless, some believe any solution is so intractable that we might as well live with an open border.
To the contrary, we can solve this problem, humanely and effectively. Strengthen our border. Enforce the laws on the books. Restore respect for the rule of law. Agree that the fight isn't over immigration, but illegal immigration. And, most important, agree that Americans have a right to define and defend what it means to be an American.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. E-mail: dennis@dennisbyrne.net
Dennis Byrne
The Chicago Tribune
As the Senate is entering the great debate over illegal immigration, it's imperative to examine the frequent claim of "immigrants' rights."
Bluntly said, people who are illegally in this country possess only those civil rights that we grant to them.
Yes, they have human rights, such as the familiar life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But civil rights, by most definitions, are protections and privileges of freedom given by nation's laws to its citizens.
This, of course, flies in the face of the contemporary confusion about "immigrants' rights," which proclaims that anyone who lands on U.S. soil, by whatever means, has the same civil right to obtain a driver's license, get a subsidized mortgage or any of the other benefits that are typically granted by law to citizens.
An illegal immigrant can claim the protections of human rights, which cannot be voided by any governmental action. But--and this will startle and anger some--an "undocumented" immigrant has no claim to equal treatment.
This may sound like a lot of philosophical gibberish, but it has some very real implications. For example, the teen who was in America illegally and who was denied admission to an Elmwood Park school has a human right to an education. But whether she has a civil right to attend that school, using our public money, at this time, should be a matter for the citizens of the United States and Elmwood Park to decide. Same goes for issuing driver's licenses or providing mortgage assistance.
I might sound like a squirrelly policy wonk for saying it, but if the citizens of the United States don't get to decide who qualifies for citizenship and who benefits from government programs, then citizenship is made meaningless by denying them control over their laws and their spending. So, Americans are properly offended by the bald-faced attempt by Mexico President Vicente Fox and 10 other Latin American leaders to prescribe their solution to the vast problems caused by the illegal presence of 11 million people in our country and a non-functional border.
While we're trying to set some ground rules in this difficult debate, it would help to clarify some language. A foreigner (yes, that's the proper name for someone here from another country) who can't produce his documents to demonstrate his legal status in the United States is different from a foreigner who has no documents because he is here illegally. Thus, "undocumented immigrant" is an imprecise substitute for "illegal immigrant."
It is yet another loss for proper usage in the never-ending skirmish over political correctness. And while the use of "illegal immigrant" may cause offense, it hardly rises to the offensive heights caused by labeling one side of a legitimate debate "nativists" or "xenophobes."
Also, as we enter this debate, it's wise to bring up what we've learned from the past, since we've been around this corner before. In 1986, we conducted this same debate and the "solution" then was to grant amnesty to about 2.7 million illegal immigrants. Then, amnesty advocates said we need grant it "just this once," and that better enforcement--mostly going after employers who hire illegal immigrants--would solve the problem. That amnesty didn't stop the illegal flow across our border, and enforcement--especially by the Bush administration--has been a joke.
Last year, 86 members of Congress felt compelled to urge President Bush to enforce three dozen immigration laws that they said the administration had ignored.
Amnesty wasn't part of a border-security bill the House passed last year. But the Senate won't escape a debate over amnesty, especially with President Bush pushing for a "guest worker" program. At least four bills are up for Senate consideration, but as far as I can tell, none of them would immediately round up 11 million people and ship them "back." Nonetheless, some believe any solution is so intractable that we might as well live with an open border.
To the contrary, we can solve this problem, humanely and effectively. Strengthen our border. Enforce the laws on the books. Restore respect for the rule of law. Agree that the fight isn't over immigration, but illegal immigration. And, most important, agree that Americans have a right to define and defend what it means to be an American.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. E-mail: dennis@dennisbyrne.net
Monday, March 06, 2006
Lent and the New Life
Fr. Apostolos Hill
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org
Posted: 01-Mar-06
One Christmas when I was a boy I remember getting the toy of my dreams. All I really wanted that year was a "Big Jim" action figure! Big Jim was a major leap forward at the time in the technology of action figures since his joints could articulate in a variety of ways and he came with a host of cool accessories. I even got Big Jim's "Rescue Rig" which was like a combination ambulance and fire truck with all sorts of cool gear for him. Yes, I had really scored that year and I couldn't have been more pleased with my 'haul' as I took Jim into my bedroom to begin our first adventure.
But I hadn't had Jim out of the box for more than an hour when disaster struck and I broke off one of his hands at the wrists! So what before had been a brand new, really cool action figure was already a not-so-new broken toy. Thus I learned that new things don't stay new very long; a tough lesson for a little boy but one that seems not to have been learned at all in our society today.
"New and improved" is a time-worn cliché used by marketers in the west to denote the next best thing. They have tapped into the intrinsic restlessness of our consumer-driven economy to make certain we're never satisfied with yesterday's goods. A new car bought today and driven off the show room floor depreciates precipitously the moment it leaves the lot. Today's new luxury high-rise become tomorrow's sagging eye-sore soon enough. Neck-tie and lapel widths wax and wane while skirt and hem lengths rise and fall like the tides and we just keep buying. We are like the Athenians described in Acts 17 who spent all their time in pursuit of "some new thing."
"Newness" is a recurring theme in Holy Scripture and one that we should take a moment to consider as we gear up for the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church which begins this Sunday evening with Forgiveness Vespers. This may come as a surprise to some since we have allowed ourselves to become conditioned to think of Lent in very negative terms. Thoughts like; "I know I'm a bad person so God is going to punish me with Great Lent" are all too common. As I write this column on "Fat Tuesday" before Ash Wednesday of the Roman Catholic calendar the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans are again filled with revelers squeezing in that last bit of drunken debauchery during Mardi Gras before the rigor and "drudgery" of Lent begins.
Even we in the Orthodox Church tend to spend far too much time obsessing about menu selections than we do about the whole point of this annual exercise. And if we're not careful we can miss out on the wonderful opportunity that Great Lent presents to us every year to walk a little more deeply in the "newness of life" Christ promised to His disciples.
In reply to the Pharisees who were accusing the Disciples of not fasting as rigorously as they should the Lord told them; "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved (Matt. 9;16-17). And when the Lord celebrated the Mystical Supper with His Disciples on the night He was betrayed, He offered them the bread and the wine saying; "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20), a reality we celebrate at every Divine Liturgy.
Christ has called us out of the darkness of our old ways into the new life of His Kingdom! He did not come to earth merely to teach us how to behave but rather how to truly live. The Lord told His Disciples; "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). To be a Christian in the world is to wake up every morning in this tired old world and to embrace the day as a new manifestation of His love for us, singing; "This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). It is to be constantly reminded of the thrilling words of St. Paul to the Corinthians (those famous sinners of the first century) "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17).
But for many of us, the joy of this new life in Christ Jesus is hard to come by. The daily pressures of scratching out a living and providing for our families' material needs can be all-consuming. Many of us plod through the events of our days only too aware that forces much larger than us have us dancing, seemingly, on the end of a string and we're not really sure who's pulling on them. We only know that we're getting further and further behind with every year as our strength starts to ebb and our dreams become forgotten and our debts pile up. This is the grim reality of the manic world we have made for ourselves today. But it is not the world Christ intends for us to inhabit.
Many times we drag ourselves, exhausted, into Divine Liturgy because we know we should be there and we know that we derive some benefit from coming to Church. But we leave feeling confused as to what precisely was accomplished or affirmed by our attendance and we wonder if perhaps it would have been better for us to stay at home and get caught up some much-needed rest. We want to know God and we want Him to know us but we feel like we're getting further and further behind in our spiritual lives too as the days fly by with our prayers unsaid and our Bibles unread and our hearts unmoved. Our souls become weary and downtrodden so we come to the beginning of Great Lent dreading the exertion required to do a little extra, to go a little bit farther. But God intends something much better for us.
The message of Great Lent isn't one of punishment but of replenishment! It isn't about regret but about reconciliation! It stems not from God's wrath but from His abiding love for us which we will witness at the end when we see the Son of Man lifted up on the Cross on Holy Friday to bear our sins and burdens for us so we can walk in the abundant, new life He came to inaugurate. The Holy Church in her wisdom knows the unflinching desire of humanity to know God and that the work-a-day reality of our lives makes it very difficult for us to consistently pursue what is best for us. So she sets aside certain times and seasons in the year for us to concentrate more intently on our souls and our relationship with Christ.
When a middle-distance runner begins a race he or she doesn't start out sprinting as fast as possible. Long races requires a bit of strategy so the runner varies the speed through the course of the race; now running more slowly to conserve energy, now running more quickly to keep up the pace, and finally sprinting when the finish line comes into view. Similarly, try as we might it isn't possible for us to intently pursue our spiritual lives with ardent devotion at all times. Even St. Paul wrote in Romans 7 about the "two laws" that war within us, keeping us from living for Christ as we should. And so the Church gives us these opportunities for us to check ourselves and to be refreshed in our souls.
Great Lent offers us the prolific schedule of services to help us put away the "old man" with his constant worries and shortcomings and put on the "new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph. 4:24). It offers us the healing mystery of Holy Confession where we go to seek the touch of the Great Physician and to submit ourselves not to His judgment but to His care. Great Lent offers us the discipline of the great fast to refresh and purify our bodies (and lighten up our waistlines!) as we align our physicality with our spirituality and incarnate what we say we believe. I always look forward to the fast as a way to reinvigorate my body and reorient it towards its real purpose, that of worshipping God. And finally, Great Lent clears away the cobwebs of our disordered minds as we turn off the TV and radio somewhat as we "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3:10).
The newness of life that Christ offers us every day is a potent antidote to the "been there-done that" mentality of modern life. The "new wine" of life in Christ Jesus of which we partake at every celebration of Holy Eucharist must not be poured into the "old wineskins" of this world, e.g. we must look beyond the "rules" of Lent to the purpose of it if we are to realize the benefit of undertaking its rigor. Eventually, all of our toys break, our buildings crumble, our physical strength fades and we're left with the only thing that truly matters; when Christ appears will we be found in Him? Near the end of the Bible, St. John writes; "And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5). May we walk joyfully in this newness of life that God in His endless mercy showers on us every morning. And may this Lenten journey be one of refreshment and rejuvenation as look expectantly for His coming Kingdom.
Fr. Apostolos Hill is the assistant priest at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Denver, Colorado.
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org
Posted: 01-Mar-06
One Christmas when I was a boy I remember getting the toy of my dreams. All I really wanted that year was a "Big Jim" action figure! Big Jim was a major leap forward at the time in the technology of action figures since his joints could articulate in a variety of ways and he came with a host of cool accessories. I even got Big Jim's "Rescue Rig" which was like a combination ambulance and fire truck with all sorts of cool gear for him. Yes, I had really scored that year and I couldn't have been more pleased with my 'haul' as I took Jim into my bedroom to begin our first adventure.
But I hadn't had Jim out of the box for more than an hour when disaster struck and I broke off one of his hands at the wrists! So what before had been a brand new, really cool action figure was already a not-so-new broken toy. Thus I learned that new things don't stay new very long; a tough lesson for a little boy but one that seems not to have been learned at all in our society today.
"New and improved" is a time-worn cliché used by marketers in the west to denote the next best thing. They have tapped into the intrinsic restlessness of our consumer-driven economy to make certain we're never satisfied with yesterday's goods. A new car bought today and driven off the show room floor depreciates precipitously the moment it leaves the lot. Today's new luxury high-rise become tomorrow's sagging eye-sore soon enough. Neck-tie and lapel widths wax and wane while skirt and hem lengths rise and fall like the tides and we just keep buying. We are like the Athenians described in Acts 17 who spent all their time in pursuit of "some new thing."
"Newness" is a recurring theme in Holy Scripture and one that we should take a moment to consider as we gear up for the beginning of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church which begins this Sunday evening with Forgiveness Vespers. This may come as a surprise to some since we have allowed ourselves to become conditioned to think of Lent in very negative terms. Thoughts like; "I know I'm a bad person so God is going to punish me with Great Lent" are all too common. As I write this column on "Fat Tuesday" before Ash Wednesday of the Roman Catholic calendar the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans are again filled with revelers squeezing in that last bit of drunken debauchery during Mardi Gras before the rigor and "drudgery" of Lent begins.
Even we in the Orthodox Church tend to spend far too much time obsessing about menu selections than we do about the whole point of this annual exercise. And if we're not careful we can miss out on the wonderful opportunity that Great Lent presents to us every year to walk a little more deeply in the "newness of life" Christ promised to His disciples.
In reply to the Pharisees who were accusing the Disciples of not fasting as rigorously as they should the Lord told them; "No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved (Matt. 9;16-17). And when the Lord celebrated the Mystical Supper with His Disciples on the night He was betrayed, He offered them the bread and the wine saying; "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20), a reality we celebrate at every Divine Liturgy.
Christ has called us out of the darkness of our old ways into the new life of His Kingdom! He did not come to earth merely to teach us how to behave but rather how to truly live. The Lord told His Disciples; "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). To be a Christian in the world is to wake up every morning in this tired old world and to embrace the day as a new manifestation of His love for us, singing; "This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). It is to be constantly reminded of the thrilling words of St. Paul to the Corinthians (those famous sinners of the first century) "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Cor. 5:17).
But for many of us, the joy of this new life in Christ Jesus is hard to come by. The daily pressures of scratching out a living and providing for our families' material needs can be all-consuming. Many of us plod through the events of our days only too aware that forces much larger than us have us dancing, seemingly, on the end of a string and we're not really sure who's pulling on them. We only know that we're getting further and further behind with every year as our strength starts to ebb and our dreams become forgotten and our debts pile up. This is the grim reality of the manic world we have made for ourselves today. But it is not the world Christ intends for us to inhabit.
Many times we drag ourselves, exhausted, into Divine Liturgy because we know we should be there and we know that we derive some benefit from coming to Church. But we leave feeling confused as to what precisely was accomplished or affirmed by our attendance and we wonder if perhaps it would have been better for us to stay at home and get caught up some much-needed rest. We want to know God and we want Him to know us but we feel like we're getting further and further behind in our spiritual lives too as the days fly by with our prayers unsaid and our Bibles unread and our hearts unmoved. Our souls become weary and downtrodden so we come to the beginning of Great Lent dreading the exertion required to do a little extra, to go a little bit farther. But God intends something much better for us.
The message of Great Lent isn't one of punishment but of replenishment! It isn't about regret but about reconciliation! It stems not from God's wrath but from His abiding love for us which we will witness at the end when we see the Son of Man lifted up on the Cross on Holy Friday to bear our sins and burdens for us so we can walk in the abundant, new life He came to inaugurate. The Holy Church in her wisdom knows the unflinching desire of humanity to know God and that the work-a-day reality of our lives makes it very difficult for us to consistently pursue what is best for us. So she sets aside certain times and seasons in the year for us to concentrate more intently on our souls and our relationship with Christ.
When a middle-distance runner begins a race he or she doesn't start out sprinting as fast as possible. Long races requires a bit of strategy so the runner varies the speed through the course of the race; now running more slowly to conserve energy, now running more quickly to keep up the pace, and finally sprinting when the finish line comes into view. Similarly, try as we might it isn't possible for us to intently pursue our spiritual lives with ardent devotion at all times. Even St. Paul wrote in Romans 7 about the "two laws" that war within us, keeping us from living for Christ as we should. And so the Church gives us these opportunities for us to check ourselves and to be refreshed in our souls.
Great Lent offers us the prolific schedule of services to help us put away the "old man" with his constant worries and shortcomings and put on the "new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph. 4:24). It offers us the healing mystery of Holy Confession where we go to seek the touch of the Great Physician and to submit ourselves not to His judgment but to His care. Great Lent offers us the discipline of the great fast to refresh and purify our bodies (and lighten up our waistlines!) as we align our physicality with our spirituality and incarnate what we say we believe. I always look forward to the fast as a way to reinvigorate my body and reorient it towards its real purpose, that of worshipping God. And finally, Great Lent clears away the cobwebs of our disordered minds as we turn off the TV and radio somewhat as we "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him" (Col. 3:10).
The newness of life that Christ offers us every day is a potent antidote to the "been there-done that" mentality of modern life. The "new wine" of life in Christ Jesus of which we partake at every celebration of Holy Eucharist must not be poured into the "old wineskins" of this world, e.g. we must look beyond the "rules" of Lent to the purpose of it if we are to realize the benefit of undertaking its rigor. Eventually, all of our toys break, our buildings crumble, our physical strength fades and we're left with the only thing that truly matters; when Christ appears will we be found in Him? Near the end of the Bible, St. John writes; "And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new" (Rev. 21:5). May we walk joyfully in this newness of life that God in His endless mercy showers on us every morning. And may this Lenten journey be one of refreshment and rejuvenation as look expectantly for His coming Kingdom.
Fr. Apostolos Hill is the assistant priest at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in Denver, Colorado.
Joel Mowbray: Blind Eye to Terror
Joel Mowbray
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 6, 2006
Unbeknownst to most Americans, federal prosecutors opened their case recently in the terrorism trial of a young American who studied under two Taliban-tied imams in California and whose grandfather was Pakistan’s minister of religion in the 1980’s.
The trial of Hamid Hayat, 23, is not taking place in the dark of night nor in a military tribunal from which the media is barred. It is in an open California courtroom, the very kind that has been overrun for trials of the likes of Scott Peterson and O.J. Simpson. Yet in the month of February, the New York Times had exactly one story on the alleged terror cell in Lodi, California. The Washington Post had none. And on the cable news channels, the trial has received scant attention.
Not that the trial suffers from lack of excitement. Hayat confessed that he had attended terror training in Pakistan, the video of which jurors saw last week. An FBI informant who had befriended the defendant—while wearing a wire—testified that Hayat would offer praise for “martyrs” and the Taliban, while professing disgust for America.
Adding further intrigue to the case is the high-profile status of the defendant’s grandfather, Qari Saeed ur Rehman. The former minister of religion in Pakistan, Rehman is the founder and still the head of the Jamia Islamia madrassa, an Islamic school believed to be deeply radical.
Hayat’s mosque in Lodi, California was headed by two imams who appear to have long, deep ties to the Taliban. The two had intended to establish an Islamic school in Lodi modeled after one they had run in Pakistan, which counts among its graduates and teachers many high-ranking members of the Taliban. Both men were deported last year.
The most tantalizing tidbit, though, is one not yet addressed at the trial. Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer, were stopped at Dulles International Airport as they were preparing to fly to Pakistan in April 2003. Agents discovered that between them, the father, an ice cream vendor, and son, a farm hand, had $28,093 in cash. (Any amount in excess of $10,000 must be declared.) Most of the money was confiscated, though neither was arrested. Yet the mystery remains: how did two menial laborers stumble into that much cash?
Almost none of these details, however, have made their way into the national media. Local papers have dutifully covered the terrorism trial, but major outlets in Washington and New York have mostly ignored it.
While miniscule coverage could be explained away by the fact that only Hayat is standing trial for attending terrorism training camps (his father’s trial on lying about his son’s travels starts this week), the Sacramento Bee last summer reported that authorities now believe that seven men from the Lodi mosque also traveled to Pakistan for training.
Such a scenario would not be shocking given what is known about the two now-deported imams, Mohammad Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed, both of whom were imported from Pakistan. Evidence presented at Ahmed’s deportation hearings (Adil Khan did not challenge his deportation) indicated that several high-ranking Taliban members were students and later teachers at the Karachi-based Jamia Farooqia.
The madrassa also apparently also had a fan in bin Laden himself. Citing classified documents, the Sacramento Bee reported, “Bin Laden, in a 1998 news conference, counted the scholars of the Farooqia school among his supporters.”
Ahmed, for his part, admitted to delivering fiery anti-American sermons in Pakistan in the wake of 9/11, in which he encouraged his followers to take up arms against the United States. That November, the Boston Globe quoted Ahmed calling for armed revolution against Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf: “Whoever is against Islam, we will destroy him. If this is rebellion, we are not afraid of rebellion. Blood is going to be spilled in Pakistan.”
Just months later, Shabbir Ahmed was granted a visa to come the United States.
Ahmed was recruited to Lodi by his mentor, Adil Khan, because the latter wanted to be replaced as imam in order to focus his energies on building an Islamic school modeled after Jamia Farooqia. He came disturbingly close to realizing his goal. Before the small town of 60,000 was rocked by the arrests of the imams and three others last June, Lodi officials had approved development of the new school. (The approval has since been rescinded, though technically only because of zoning concerns.)
At least local media outlets in Northern California are covering the Hayat trial. Imam Ali al-Timimi was convicted last year of instructing his followers to wage jihad against the United States. Nine of his followers have been convicted. All this happened in Northern Virginia, yet the Washington Post ran just a handful of stories before al-Timimi’s conviction.
Once the guilty verdict was handed down, though, the Post made it a prominent story—by editorializing on his behalf, arguing that the life sentence was “too harsh.” The paper’s reasoning? His followers didn’t wage successful jihad, thus it wasn’t as serious.
Is this the new media barometer, that terrorism is only worth reporting if it’s successful?
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Joel Mowbray is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.
http://www.FrontPageMag.com
March 6, 2006
Unbeknownst to most Americans, federal prosecutors opened their case recently in the terrorism trial of a young American who studied under two Taliban-tied imams in California and whose grandfather was Pakistan’s minister of religion in the 1980’s.
The trial of Hamid Hayat, 23, is not taking place in the dark of night nor in a military tribunal from which the media is barred. It is in an open California courtroom, the very kind that has been overrun for trials of the likes of Scott Peterson and O.J. Simpson. Yet in the month of February, the New York Times had exactly one story on the alleged terror cell in Lodi, California. The Washington Post had none. And on the cable news channels, the trial has received scant attention.
Not that the trial suffers from lack of excitement. Hayat confessed that he had attended terror training in Pakistan, the video of which jurors saw last week. An FBI informant who had befriended the defendant—while wearing a wire—testified that Hayat would offer praise for “martyrs” and the Taliban, while professing disgust for America.
Adding further intrigue to the case is the high-profile status of the defendant’s grandfather, Qari Saeed ur Rehman. The former minister of religion in Pakistan, Rehman is the founder and still the head of the Jamia Islamia madrassa, an Islamic school believed to be deeply radical.
Hayat’s mosque in Lodi, California was headed by two imams who appear to have long, deep ties to the Taliban. The two had intended to establish an Islamic school in Lodi modeled after one they had run in Pakistan, which counts among its graduates and teachers many high-ranking members of the Taliban. Both men were deported last year.
The most tantalizing tidbit, though, is one not yet addressed at the trial. Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer, were stopped at Dulles International Airport as they were preparing to fly to Pakistan in April 2003. Agents discovered that between them, the father, an ice cream vendor, and son, a farm hand, had $28,093 in cash. (Any amount in excess of $10,000 must be declared.) Most of the money was confiscated, though neither was arrested. Yet the mystery remains: how did two menial laborers stumble into that much cash?
Almost none of these details, however, have made their way into the national media. Local papers have dutifully covered the terrorism trial, but major outlets in Washington and New York have mostly ignored it.
While miniscule coverage could be explained away by the fact that only Hayat is standing trial for attending terrorism training camps (his father’s trial on lying about his son’s travels starts this week), the Sacramento Bee last summer reported that authorities now believe that seven men from the Lodi mosque also traveled to Pakistan for training.
Such a scenario would not be shocking given what is known about the two now-deported imams, Mohammad Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed, both of whom were imported from Pakistan. Evidence presented at Ahmed’s deportation hearings (Adil Khan did not challenge his deportation) indicated that several high-ranking Taliban members were students and later teachers at the Karachi-based Jamia Farooqia.
The madrassa also apparently also had a fan in bin Laden himself. Citing classified documents, the Sacramento Bee reported, “Bin Laden, in a 1998 news conference, counted the scholars of the Farooqia school among his supporters.”
Ahmed, for his part, admitted to delivering fiery anti-American sermons in Pakistan in the wake of 9/11, in which he encouraged his followers to take up arms against the United States. That November, the Boston Globe quoted Ahmed calling for armed revolution against Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf: “Whoever is against Islam, we will destroy him. If this is rebellion, we are not afraid of rebellion. Blood is going to be spilled in Pakistan.”
Just months later, Shabbir Ahmed was granted a visa to come the United States.
Ahmed was recruited to Lodi by his mentor, Adil Khan, because the latter wanted to be replaced as imam in order to focus his energies on building an Islamic school modeled after Jamia Farooqia. He came disturbingly close to realizing his goal. Before the small town of 60,000 was rocked by the arrests of the imams and three others last June, Lodi officials had approved development of the new school. (The approval has since been rescinded, though technically only because of zoning concerns.)
At least local media outlets in Northern California are covering the Hayat trial. Imam Ali al-Timimi was convicted last year of instructing his followers to wage jihad against the United States. Nine of his followers have been convicted. All this happened in Northern Virginia, yet the Washington Post ran just a handful of stories before al-Timimi’s conviction.
Once the guilty verdict was handed down, though, the Post made it a prominent story—by editorializing on his behalf, arguing that the life sentence was “too harsh.” The paper’s reasoning? His followers didn’t wage successful jihad, thus it wasn’t as serious.
Is this the new media barometer, that terrorism is only worth reporting if it’s successful?
Click Here to support Frontpagemag.com.
Joel Mowbray is author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America’s Security.
John Fund: Taliban Man at Yale
University officials are embarrassed--but not embarrassed enough.
Monday, March 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
Are there no limits to how arrogant and out-of-touch America's Ivy League schools can get? Last week it emerged that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters. King George's troops played the music to "The World Turned Upside Down" as they surrendered at Yorktown. Perhaps the Ivy League should adopt that tune as they surrender all vestiges of common sense.
Yale's decision to admit Mr. Rahmatullah is particularly jarring given constant reminders of the Taliban's crimes--both past and present. Last week, as President Bush visited democratic Afghanistan, its TV news aired fresh footage of beheaded bodies being paraded through a street. The men had been murdered because they opposed local Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.
Last week I described Mr. Rahmatullah's remarkable visit to The Wall Street Journal's offices in the spring of 2001. .After a meeting in which he defended the Taliban's treatment of women and said he hadn't seen any evidence that their "guest" Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, I felt I had looked into the face of evil.
I walked Mr. Rahmatullah out. I will never forget how he stopped at a picture window and stared up at the World Trade Center, which terrorists had failed to destroy in 1993. When I finally pried him away, I couldn't help but think, He must have been thinking about the one that got away.
You would think Yale would feel compelled to explain its decision to admit Mr. Rahmatullah. Instead, a cone of silence has descended over the university. Yale officials didn't return my calls or those of other reporters for several days last week. Finally on Friday, spokesman Tom Conroy said the university would have no comment, citing privacy concerns that preclude it from discussing any individual student.
Almost no one will now defend Mr. Ramatullah's presence as a special student, even though a week ago many had no such inhibitions in a splashy New York Times magazine piece, which broke the news that he had been at Yale for eight months. In that piece, Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions before he took the same post at Stanford, explained that Yale had missed out on another foreign student of the same caliber as Mr. Rahmatullah but that "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again."
Now Mr. Shaw isn't returning phone calls, and much of the reaction from Yale to the outside world is downright hostile. One faculty member told me he wasn't interested in questions about Mr. Rahmatullah and accused me of pursuing "another Journal attack on Yale's lax liberal standards." He then threatened to attack me in print as "slimy."
At the same time, many Yale alumni and students tell me they are concerned that Yale refuses to explain why it honored Mr. Rahmatullah with a prize perch when countless well-qualified Americans--not to mention other Afghans--would jump at the chance but will never get it.
To understand what prompted Yale to invite Mr. Rahmatullah to its campus, I interviewed several Yale students and faculty members. Here are their explanations along with my analysis.
The Taliban were a dictatorial regime, but not dramatically different from many others. Their coming to power was originally welcomed by many people tired of civil war.
It's certainly true that in 1996 the country more or less fell into the lap of the Taliban, a group of young fanatics straight out of "Lord of the Flies." After the Soviet departure from Afghanistan in 1989, the country had become an anarchic stew of feuding warlords. The Taliban consolidated power into a central government and soon had control of 90% of the country.
But as soon as they were secure in power, they revealed they were medieval fascists. Homosexuals were thrown into ditches and then had concrete walls bulldozed over them. Women caught wearing nail polish had their fingernails pulled out or in some cases their fingers chopped off. Everything was banned from television to kite flying to paper bags. Paper bags? Apparently one of the mullahs heard that bags in Kabul's market had been made out of recycled copies of the Koran, so they had to go.
Mr. Rahmatullah became an apologist for all of this during his propaganda tour of the U.S. in the months before 9/11. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" captured one testy exchange he had with an exiled Afghan woman who told him, "You have imprisoned the women. It's a horror, let me tell you." The Afghan diplomat responded with a sneer: "I'm really sorry for your husband. He must have a very difficult time with you." Asked by the Times of London last week if he regretted that statement now, he replied: "That woman, for your information, did divorce her husband." He told the New York Times that if he had it to do over again he would have been "a little bit" softer in his 2001 speeches.
Mr. Rahmatullah now sincerely regrets serving as a high Taliban official and has rejected their hatred of the West.
He does say that some of his views have changed. "I was very young then," Mr. Rahmatullah, now 27, told the Yale Daily News last week. "At that age, you don't really have the same sensibilities that you may have later." He has told fellow students he now believes in free speech and the right of women to vote. He told the New York Times the Taliban were bad for his country because "the radicals were taking over and doing crazy stuff," implying that the early days of Taliban rule were benign. He says he believes that after graduation, he can serve as a bridge between the Muslim world and the West.
If that's true, it's time that Yale and the State Department, which issued his student visa, realize that there's evidence his views are still pretty unreconstructed and, in fact, would be rejected by most of the world's Muslims. Mr. Rahmatullah isn't giving interviews now, but last Wednesday he did talk with Tim Reid of the Times of London. He acknowledged he had done poorly in his class "Terrorism: Past, Present and Future," something he attributed to his disgust with the textbooks. "They would say the Taliban were the same as al Qaeda," he told the Times.
He shifted blame for many of the Taliban's brutal practices onto its Ministry of Vice and Virtue, even though he had defended their actions in 2001. As for the infamous filmed executions of women in Kabul's soccer stadium? "That was all Vice and Virtue stuff. There were also executions happening in Texas."
One shouldn't depend on one interview for a full picture of someone's current views. But late last year, Mr. Rahmatullah wrote an essay titled "Ignorance! Not an Option," which appeared on the Web site of the International Education Foundation, the charity headed by CBS contract cameraman-producer Mike Hoover that is sponsoring Mr. Rahmatullah's stay in the U.S. In the essay, Mr. Rahmatullah takes Americans to task for both their "xenophobic" attitudes and ignorance of the Taliban. He claims the Taliban "were too ignorant to know that their guest"--Osama bin Laden--"was harming other people." He concludes that the Taliban "honestly practiced what they had learned in their religious schools. They did what they had been taught to do. Whether what they had been taught was good or bad is another subject." If this is sincere repentance, Yale needs to acknowledge that at the school that fathered literary deconstructionism, the term has lost its meaning.
Mr. Hoover, a swashbuckling filmmaker who has worked for CBS off and on for two decades and who befriended Mr. Rahmatullah during three visits to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, also holds curious views about his former hosts. He wouldn't return my calls, but when Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity asked him Friday if the Taliban was a "brutal" regime, Mr. Hoover would say only that "parts of them were. It wasn't as monolithic as we'd like to make it out to be."
Mr. Hannity quoted from Mr. Ramatullah's article on the International Education Foundation's Web site in which Mr. Ramatullah called Israel a "franchise state" serving "as an American al Qaeda against the Arab World." Mr. Hoover said, "I had never heard that before." In fact, not only did the article appear on a Web site Mr. Hoover operates, but after the al Qaeda quote appeared in the Yale Daily News on Wednesday, the article mysteriously vanished--two days before Mr. Hoover claimed to be unaware of it.
Yale needs to be an international school, tolerant of the views of other cultures and willing to understand them.
Having lived overseas as a child and traveled to many developing countries, I am all for students knowing more about the world. But the arguments for accepting Mr. Rahmatullah are surreal. "If we didn't accept him and try to learn from him, how could we say we're this diverse body and institution of higher learning?" freshman Benjamin Gonzalez asked the New York Sun. "If we just dismiss him, what does that say about us?" It may say that moral relativism has such an entrenched hold on campus that some people can no longer make needed distinctions.
Some, though, are more discerning. James Kirchick, a senior who describes himself as a liberal Democrat, is appalled that campus feminists and gays trash American society as intolerant but won't protest now that "an actual, live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever" is in their midst. "They have other concerns, such as single-sex bathrooms and fraternities," he told me.
There was a time when some at Yale summoned outrage at the Taliban. In 2000, a band of 30 protesters gathered outside Pierson College when it hosted a "master's tea" for Taliban representative Abdul Hakeem Mujahid. While the protesters chanted outside, Mr. Mujahid calmly told his audience that "99% of [Afghan] women approve" of the Taliban and that the regime was committed to elevating the status of women in society. Eli Muller, the reporter who covered the event for the Yale Daily News, was shocked that his lies "went nearly unchallenged."
After the talk, Mr. Muller observed someone approach a spokeswoman for the Taliban and invite her to give a talk at the law school on women's rights. Mr. Muller concluded in an op-ed piece entitled "Sympathy for the Devil" that the "moral overconfidence of Yale students makes them subject to manipulation by people who are genuinely evil." That year, Lynn Amowitz, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, found that 18% of the 223 women she interviewed who lived under Taliban rule had attempted suicide by drowning in local rivers, drinking pesticides or overdosing on children's medicines.
Six years later, even after 9/11, the Yale community represents the world turned upside down. Beth Nisson, a senior, writes that Mr. Rahmatullah's admission to Yale "should serve as a model for American higher education." Della Sentilles, the co-author of a feminist blog at Yale, insists one can't be judgmental about the Taliban. "As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another," she writes. "American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends."
Ziba Ayeen, a Afghan-American who fled her native land with her family in the 1980s, isn't amused by such thinking. "The irony of Yale educating an official in a regime that barred women from going to school is too much," she told me.
When I asked several people at Yale if the reaction to Mr. Rahmatullah would be different if he were, say, a former official of the apartheid regime of South Africa, the reaction was universal: Of course he would be barred. When I asked why, I was told I had no idea how liberal a place Yale was. "But what is liberal about the Taliban, then or now?" I innocently asked. Eric White, a senior, told me that many students believe that regimes run by whites, such as apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, come out of Western traditions and are judged differently than non-Western regimes. "There's a real feeling that we don't have the right or understanding to be able to hold those regimes to the same standards."
When I asked Prof. Vivek Sharma, who briefly had Mr. Rahmatullah in one of his seminars, about this double standard, he explained, "There's a belief among many at Yale that we really have to specifically understand the Middle East because of the American occupation there and that we must understand our enemies as deeply as we can."
But if Mr. Rahmatullah's admission was motivated by a desire to understand the enemy, why was Yale mum about Mr. Ramatullah's background for eight months, until he himself chose to reveal it to the New York Times? Nat Hentoff, a columnist for the Village Voice and a First Amendment champion, says Mr. Rahmatullah's admission might have value as a "laboratory experiment" to see how far "tolerance of anti-tolerance" might go. "But the whole thing looks fishy given Yale's reluctance to tell people about their educational prize," he told me. "Thus it looks to be more about the lasting effects of political correctness than a desire to hear other points of view."
Somebody else is responsible for Mr. Rahmatullah's admission as a Yale student.
No one is more surprised than Mr. Rahmatullah at his good fortune. "I'm the luckiest person in the world," he told the New York Times. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale." What explains his luck?
The buck-passing has been brisk the past week. Yale has privately told some people that since the State Department approved his student visa, there must not be a problem with the former Taliban official. State Department spokesman Adam Erelli says that "given what he was doing and why he wanted to come to the United States, [there were no] grounds for ineligibility" for a visa. Another State Department official told me off the record that because Mr. Rahmatullah had been accepted by so prestigious an institution as Yale the probable assumption made by lower-level officials was that he was OK.
P.J. Crowley, a former official in the Clinton National Security Council, speculated that perhaps Mr. Ramatullah had been an intelligence asset for the U.S. and his admission was a reward for that help. But my calls to several sources turned up no hint of that. Laili Helms, a former spokeswoman for the Taliban who lives in New Jersey, claims that Mr. Rahmatullah met with officials at the CIA and the State Department during his 2001 tour and proposed the Taliban hold Osama bin Laden in a fixed location long enough so the U.S. could find and kill him. My sources at both agencies say there is no evidence such a proposal was ever made.
So the mystery deepens. Even Mr. Hoover, who frequently visited the Taliban in an effort to secure an interview with Osama bin Laden, is vague about the details of why his charity is paying for his friend to come to the U.S. Indeed, it sounds as if he is shifting responsibility. When asked why Mr. Ramatullah is here, he told Fox News: "Those are questions for all of the people all down the chain of command that have backed him coming to the country, starting with the American generals who OK'd it for him to come, the people in Islamabad that gave him the visa and the people at Yale who decided to put him on into the campus."
As for who finances his foundation, Mr. Hoover said it was a group of friends who after finding out "about his background, and heard his ideas, they were behind helping fund him to go to Yale."
Kurt Lohbeck, who worked with Mr. Hoover as a contract reporter/producer for CBS News in Afghanistan is skeptical about the whole matter. "I worked in the region for 10 years, and there are a lot of people there who should go to Yale before Rahmatullah," he told me. As for Mr. Hoover's curious ambivalence today about the Taliban, Mr. Lohbeck said Mr. Hoover would not have been able to go back so frequently as a guest of the Taliban "unless he had kowtowed to them on the first visit. They would have had to grease the skids for him."
For all his faults, Mr. Rahmatullah is a positive influence on campus.
How good a role model could Mr. Rahmatullah be? He got into Yale with a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree. Next month, he will apply to become a full-time student working towards a degree in political science. To his credit, Harold Hongju Koh, dean of Yale Law School and a former Clinton administration human-rights official, says that before Mr. Rahmatullah is accepted, "it would be good to know more about how he came to work for the Taliban in the first place and whether he's fully repudiated their views." Mr. Koh engaged in a somewhat heated debate with Mr. Rahmatullah at Yale during his 2001 U.S. tour and only "reluctantly" shook his hand afterwards.
Mr. Ramatullah has retained his habit of heated argument. Last year, he attended Prof. Sharma's seminar on war in Europe during the Middle Ages. "He was antagonistic toward other students and he tended to take over the class discussion," one student recalled. "He would talk all the time about life in the mountains of Afghanistan." During the last class Mr. Rahmatullah attended, Mr. Sharma says, "he interrupted me constantly." When I asked the professor to confirm student reports that he had asked Mr. Rahmatullah to leave his class, he replied "That's not quite true. I forcefully made it clear what I thought of him wanting to draw attention to himself." Mr. Rahmatullah never returned to his class, taking advantage of an opt-out provision.
Others say Mr. Rahmatullah has been better behaved, albeit sometimes brusque. Amy Aaland, the executive director of the Jewish center where Mr. Rahmatullah frequently eats dinner, has no problems with him. She told the Yale Daily news that she sees his story "as representative of Yale's rich student diversity."
But rather than defend their prize diversity catch, the university and the other enablers of Mr. Rahatullah's presence there are clamming up and hoping the furor goes away. "Yale has weathered storms like this before with complete silence," one former Yale administrator told me. "It's cold game theory on their part. They've already alienated conservative alumni; they're not giving much anymore. If they can keep broader donor anger at bay, they feel they don't have much to lose."
Well, perhaps Yale does. In a column lamenting how Larry Summers was deposed as president of Harvard, the New York Times' John Tierney, a Yale graduate, reports on all the reasons American higher education refuses to change. He quotes Fred Siegel, a historian at Cooper Union, as saying "the Achilles' heel of academics is their status anxiety. The only way to attack them is with mockery."
It's been more than half a century since William F. Buckley mocked the wooly-headed thinking he found at his alma mater in "God and Man at Yale." Now we have Mr. Taliban Man at Yale. If that doesn't cry out for mockery, nothing does.
Monday, March 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
Are there no limits to how arrogant and out-of-touch America's Ivy League schools can get? Last week it emerged that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former deputy foreign secretary of the Taliban, is now a student at Yale while at the same time the school continues to block ROTC training from its campus and argues for the right of its law school to exclude military recruiters. King George's troops played the music to "The World Turned Upside Down" as they surrendered at Yorktown. Perhaps the Ivy League should adopt that tune as they surrender all vestiges of common sense.
Yale's decision to admit Mr. Rahmatullah is particularly jarring given constant reminders of the Taliban's crimes--both past and present. Last week, as President Bush visited democratic Afghanistan, its TV news aired fresh footage of beheaded bodies being paraded through a street. The men had been murdered because they opposed local Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists.
Last week I described Mr. Rahmatullah's remarkable visit to The Wall Street Journal's offices in the spring of 2001. .After a meeting in which he defended the Taliban's treatment of women and said he hadn't seen any evidence that their "guest" Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, I felt I had looked into the face of evil.
I walked Mr. Rahmatullah out. I will never forget how he stopped at a picture window and stared up at the World Trade Center, which terrorists had failed to destroy in 1993. When I finally pried him away, I couldn't help but think, He must have been thinking about the one that got away.
You would think Yale would feel compelled to explain its decision to admit Mr. Rahmatullah. Instead, a cone of silence has descended over the university. Yale officials didn't return my calls or those of other reporters for several days last week. Finally on Friday, spokesman Tom Conroy said the university would have no comment, citing privacy concerns that preclude it from discussing any individual student.
Almost no one will now defend Mr. Ramatullah's presence as a special student, even though a week ago many had no such inhibitions in a splashy New York Times magazine piece, which broke the news that he had been at Yale for eight months. In that piece, Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions before he took the same post at Stanford, explained that Yale had missed out on another foreign student of the same caliber as Mr. Rahmatullah but that "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again."
Now Mr. Shaw isn't returning phone calls, and much of the reaction from Yale to the outside world is downright hostile. One faculty member told me he wasn't interested in questions about Mr. Rahmatullah and accused me of pursuing "another Journal attack on Yale's lax liberal standards." He then threatened to attack me in print as "slimy."
At the same time, many Yale alumni and students tell me they are concerned that Yale refuses to explain why it honored Mr. Rahmatullah with a prize perch when countless well-qualified Americans--not to mention other Afghans--would jump at the chance but will never get it.
To understand what prompted Yale to invite Mr. Rahmatullah to its campus, I interviewed several Yale students and faculty members. Here are their explanations along with my analysis.
The Taliban were a dictatorial regime, but not dramatically different from many others. Their coming to power was originally welcomed by many people tired of civil war.
It's certainly true that in 1996 the country more or less fell into the lap of the Taliban, a group of young fanatics straight out of "Lord of the Flies." After the Soviet departure from Afghanistan in 1989, the country had become an anarchic stew of feuding warlords. The Taliban consolidated power into a central government and soon had control of 90% of the country.
But as soon as they were secure in power, they revealed they were medieval fascists. Homosexuals were thrown into ditches and then had concrete walls bulldozed over them. Women caught wearing nail polish had their fingernails pulled out or in some cases their fingers chopped off. Everything was banned from television to kite flying to paper bags. Paper bags? Apparently one of the mullahs heard that bags in Kabul's market had been made out of recycled copies of the Koran, so they had to go.
Mr. Rahmatullah became an apologist for all of this during his propaganda tour of the U.S. in the months before 9/11. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" captured one testy exchange he had with an exiled Afghan woman who told him, "You have imprisoned the women. It's a horror, let me tell you." The Afghan diplomat responded with a sneer: "I'm really sorry for your husband. He must have a very difficult time with you." Asked by the Times of London last week if he regretted that statement now, he replied: "That woman, for your information, did divorce her husband." He told the New York Times that if he had it to do over again he would have been "a little bit" softer in his 2001 speeches.
Mr. Rahmatullah now sincerely regrets serving as a high Taliban official and has rejected their hatred of the West.
He does say that some of his views have changed. "I was very young then," Mr. Rahmatullah, now 27, told the Yale Daily News last week. "At that age, you don't really have the same sensibilities that you may have later." He has told fellow students he now believes in free speech and the right of women to vote. He told the New York Times the Taliban were bad for his country because "the radicals were taking over and doing crazy stuff," implying that the early days of Taliban rule were benign. He says he believes that after graduation, he can serve as a bridge between the Muslim world and the West.
If that's true, it's time that Yale and the State Department, which issued his student visa, realize that there's evidence his views are still pretty unreconstructed and, in fact, would be rejected by most of the world's Muslims. Mr. Rahmatullah isn't giving interviews now, but last Wednesday he did talk with Tim Reid of the Times of London. He acknowledged he had done poorly in his class "Terrorism: Past, Present and Future," something he attributed to his disgust with the textbooks. "They would say the Taliban were the same as al Qaeda," he told the Times.
He shifted blame for many of the Taliban's brutal practices onto its Ministry of Vice and Virtue, even though he had defended their actions in 2001. As for the infamous filmed executions of women in Kabul's soccer stadium? "That was all Vice and Virtue stuff. There were also executions happening in Texas."
One shouldn't depend on one interview for a full picture of someone's current views. But late last year, Mr. Rahmatullah wrote an essay titled "Ignorance! Not an Option," which appeared on the Web site of the International Education Foundation, the charity headed by CBS contract cameraman-producer Mike Hoover that is sponsoring Mr. Rahmatullah's stay in the U.S. In the essay, Mr. Rahmatullah takes Americans to task for both their "xenophobic" attitudes and ignorance of the Taliban. He claims the Taliban "were too ignorant to know that their guest"--Osama bin Laden--"was harming other people." He concludes that the Taliban "honestly practiced what they had learned in their religious schools. They did what they had been taught to do. Whether what they had been taught was good or bad is another subject." If this is sincere repentance, Yale needs to acknowledge that at the school that fathered literary deconstructionism, the term has lost its meaning.
Mr. Hoover, a swashbuckling filmmaker who has worked for CBS off and on for two decades and who befriended Mr. Rahmatullah during three visits to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, also holds curious views about his former hosts. He wouldn't return my calls, but when Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity asked him Friday if the Taliban was a "brutal" regime, Mr. Hoover would say only that "parts of them were. It wasn't as monolithic as we'd like to make it out to be."
Mr. Hannity quoted from Mr. Ramatullah's article on the International Education Foundation's Web site in which Mr. Ramatullah called Israel a "franchise state" serving "as an American al Qaeda against the Arab World." Mr. Hoover said, "I had never heard that before." In fact, not only did the article appear on a Web site Mr. Hoover operates, but after the al Qaeda quote appeared in the Yale Daily News on Wednesday, the article mysteriously vanished--two days before Mr. Hoover claimed to be unaware of it.
Yale needs to be an international school, tolerant of the views of other cultures and willing to understand them.
Having lived overseas as a child and traveled to many developing countries, I am all for students knowing more about the world. But the arguments for accepting Mr. Rahmatullah are surreal. "If we didn't accept him and try to learn from him, how could we say we're this diverse body and institution of higher learning?" freshman Benjamin Gonzalez asked the New York Sun. "If we just dismiss him, what does that say about us?" It may say that moral relativism has such an entrenched hold on campus that some people can no longer make needed distinctions.
Some, though, are more discerning. James Kirchick, a senior who describes himself as a liberal Democrat, is appalled that campus feminists and gays trash American society as intolerant but won't protest now that "an actual, live remnant of one of the most misogynistic and homophobic regimes ever" is in their midst. "They have other concerns, such as single-sex bathrooms and fraternities," he told me.
There was a time when some at Yale summoned outrage at the Taliban. In 2000, a band of 30 protesters gathered outside Pierson College when it hosted a "master's tea" for Taliban representative Abdul Hakeem Mujahid. While the protesters chanted outside, Mr. Mujahid calmly told his audience that "99% of [Afghan] women approve" of the Taliban and that the regime was committed to elevating the status of women in society. Eli Muller, the reporter who covered the event for the Yale Daily News, was shocked that his lies "went nearly unchallenged."
After the talk, Mr. Muller observed someone approach a spokeswoman for the Taliban and invite her to give a talk at the law school on women's rights. Mr. Muller concluded in an op-ed piece entitled "Sympathy for the Devil" that the "moral overconfidence of Yale students makes them subject to manipulation by people who are genuinely evil." That year, Lynn Amowitz, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, found that 18% of the 223 women she interviewed who lived under Taliban rule had attempted suicide by drowning in local rivers, drinking pesticides or overdosing on children's medicines.
Six years later, even after 9/11, the Yale community represents the world turned upside down. Beth Nisson, a senior, writes that Mr. Rahmatullah's admission to Yale "should serve as a model for American higher education." Della Sentilles, the co-author of a feminist blog at Yale, insists one can't be judgmental about the Taliban. "As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another," she writes. "American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends."
Ziba Ayeen, a Afghan-American who fled her native land with her family in the 1980s, isn't amused by such thinking. "The irony of Yale educating an official in a regime that barred women from going to school is too much," she told me.
When I asked several people at Yale if the reaction to Mr. Rahmatullah would be different if he were, say, a former official of the apartheid regime of South Africa, the reaction was universal: Of course he would be barred. When I asked why, I was told I had no idea how liberal a place Yale was. "But what is liberal about the Taliban, then or now?" I innocently asked. Eric White, a senior, told me that many students believe that regimes run by whites, such as apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, come out of Western traditions and are judged differently than non-Western regimes. "There's a real feeling that we don't have the right or understanding to be able to hold those regimes to the same standards."
When I asked Prof. Vivek Sharma, who briefly had Mr. Rahmatullah in one of his seminars, about this double standard, he explained, "There's a belief among many at Yale that we really have to specifically understand the Middle East because of the American occupation there and that we must understand our enemies as deeply as we can."
But if Mr. Rahmatullah's admission was motivated by a desire to understand the enemy, why was Yale mum about Mr. Ramatullah's background for eight months, until he himself chose to reveal it to the New York Times? Nat Hentoff, a columnist for the Village Voice and a First Amendment champion, says Mr. Rahmatullah's admission might have value as a "laboratory experiment" to see how far "tolerance of anti-tolerance" might go. "But the whole thing looks fishy given Yale's reluctance to tell people about their educational prize," he told me. "Thus it looks to be more about the lasting effects of political correctness than a desire to hear other points of view."
Somebody else is responsible for Mr. Rahmatullah's admission as a Yale student.
No one is more surprised than Mr. Rahmatullah at his good fortune. "I'm the luckiest person in the world," he told the New York Times. "I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale." What explains his luck?
The buck-passing has been brisk the past week. Yale has privately told some people that since the State Department approved his student visa, there must not be a problem with the former Taliban official. State Department spokesman Adam Erelli says that "given what he was doing and why he wanted to come to the United States, [there were no] grounds for ineligibility" for a visa. Another State Department official told me off the record that because Mr. Rahmatullah had been accepted by so prestigious an institution as Yale the probable assumption made by lower-level officials was that he was OK.
P.J. Crowley, a former official in the Clinton National Security Council, speculated that perhaps Mr. Ramatullah had been an intelligence asset for the U.S. and his admission was a reward for that help. But my calls to several sources turned up no hint of that. Laili Helms, a former spokeswoman for the Taliban who lives in New Jersey, claims that Mr. Rahmatullah met with officials at the CIA and the State Department during his 2001 tour and proposed the Taliban hold Osama bin Laden in a fixed location long enough so the U.S. could find and kill him. My sources at both agencies say there is no evidence such a proposal was ever made.
So the mystery deepens. Even Mr. Hoover, who frequently visited the Taliban in an effort to secure an interview with Osama bin Laden, is vague about the details of why his charity is paying for his friend to come to the U.S. Indeed, it sounds as if he is shifting responsibility. When asked why Mr. Ramatullah is here, he told Fox News: "Those are questions for all of the people all down the chain of command that have backed him coming to the country, starting with the American generals who OK'd it for him to come, the people in Islamabad that gave him the visa and the people at Yale who decided to put him on into the campus."
As for who finances his foundation, Mr. Hoover said it was a group of friends who after finding out "about his background, and heard his ideas, they were behind helping fund him to go to Yale."
Kurt Lohbeck, who worked with Mr. Hoover as a contract reporter/producer for CBS News in Afghanistan is skeptical about the whole matter. "I worked in the region for 10 years, and there are a lot of people there who should go to Yale before Rahmatullah," he told me. As for Mr. Hoover's curious ambivalence today about the Taliban, Mr. Lohbeck said Mr. Hoover would not have been able to go back so frequently as a guest of the Taliban "unless he had kowtowed to them on the first visit. They would have had to grease the skids for him."
For all his faults, Mr. Rahmatullah is a positive influence on campus.
How good a role model could Mr. Rahmatullah be? He got into Yale with a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree. Next month, he will apply to become a full-time student working towards a degree in political science. To his credit, Harold Hongju Koh, dean of Yale Law School and a former Clinton administration human-rights official, says that before Mr. Rahmatullah is accepted, "it would be good to know more about how he came to work for the Taliban in the first place and whether he's fully repudiated their views." Mr. Koh engaged in a somewhat heated debate with Mr. Rahmatullah at Yale during his 2001 U.S. tour and only "reluctantly" shook his hand afterwards.
Mr. Ramatullah has retained his habit of heated argument. Last year, he attended Prof. Sharma's seminar on war in Europe during the Middle Ages. "He was antagonistic toward other students and he tended to take over the class discussion," one student recalled. "He would talk all the time about life in the mountains of Afghanistan." During the last class Mr. Rahmatullah attended, Mr. Sharma says, "he interrupted me constantly." When I asked the professor to confirm student reports that he had asked Mr. Rahmatullah to leave his class, he replied "That's not quite true. I forcefully made it clear what I thought of him wanting to draw attention to himself." Mr. Rahmatullah never returned to his class, taking advantage of an opt-out provision.
Others say Mr. Rahmatullah has been better behaved, albeit sometimes brusque. Amy Aaland, the executive director of the Jewish center where Mr. Rahmatullah frequently eats dinner, has no problems with him. She told the Yale Daily news that she sees his story "as representative of Yale's rich student diversity."
But rather than defend their prize diversity catch, the university and the other enablers of Mr. Rahatullah's presence there are clamming up and hoping the furor goes away. "Yale has weathered storms like this before with complete silence," one former Yale administrator told me. "It's cold game theory on their part. They've already alienated conservative alumni; they're not giving much anymore. If they can keep broader donor anger at bay, they feel they don't have much to lose."
Well, perhaps Yale does. In a column lamenting how Larry Summers was deposed as president of Harvard, the New York Times' John Tierney, a Yale graduate, reports on all the reasons American higher education refuses to change. He quotes Fred Siegel, a historian at Cooper Union, as saying "the Achilles' heel of academics is their status anxiety. The only way to attack them is with mockery."
It's been more than half a century since William F. Buckley mocked the wooly-headed thinking he found at his alma mater in "God and Man at Yale." Now we have Mr. Taliban Man at Yale. If that doesn't cry out for mockery, nothing does.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Ralph Wood: Why C. S. Lewis is not a culture warrior
http://www.narniaontour.com
RALPH WOOD is professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University and author of The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth (Westminster John Knox Press, October 2003).
We must be ever so cautious not to turn this happy moment into an unhappy misuse of Lewis. Aslan will roar with real wrath if we make this movie into an occasion for Christian clucking. It is absolutely important that we not make a classic Christian story such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe into the latest weapon in the culture wars. The church of Jesus Christ is not a political party of either the left or the right. Christ calls us to offer the world—whether red or blue, whether black or white, whether yellow or brown or pink like me—a drastic counter-cultural alternative. Aslan forbid, therefore, that we Christians start saying to the secular world, with thumping self-satisfaction: “Look, we told you so long ago. We’re right, you’re wrong and now, with the overwhelming popularity of this movie, we can prove it. So get on board the Christian bandwagon and stop your whining about peace and justice and poverty. We Christians are running this country, and we have Aslan as our King, the Lion who will devour anyone who gets in our way.”
C.S. Lewis himself rejected all such Christian triumphalism. He knew, all too well, that we Christians have been guilty of terrible sins, and he called for us to repent of them. He called therefore for some Christian to volunteer to write “the full confession of … of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of ‘the World’ will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch” (The Four Loves, 49). Moloch is the pagan deity whose worship requires the sacrifice of children.
In making this startling claim, Lewis has in mind not only the medieval pograms against Jews, not only the Crusades and the Inquisition, but also our own Protestant sins—not only Luther’s slaughter of 20,000 peasants and Calvin’s burning of Servetus at the stake, but also the Salem Witchcraft trials in our own country, as well as our Christian complicity in the German Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag. We Christians have blood on our hands, and therefore we have no business setting ourselves up as some pristine party of the pure and the holy.
Lewis abominated all attempts to politicize his work, knowing well that all too many Conservatives would have been eager to make him their literary saint. When in 1951 the Tory government of Winston Churchill offered Lewis the extraordinary distinction of being made a Commander of the British Empire, he politely declined:
"There are always knaves … who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist [i.e., right-wing] propaganda, and my appearance in the Honours List wd. of course strengthen their hands. It is therefore better that I shd. not appear there. "(Letters, p. 235)
Though politically conservative, Lewis expressed his gratitude to Britain’s welfare state for providing a ground floor of economic security to every citizen, thus protecting the natively weak against the all-devouring strong. “Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall,” he wrote in 1943; they are necessary protections “against cruelty.” “We Britons,” Lewis added, “should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy.” He concluded, ever so tellingly, that “we still need more of the economic” kind of democracy (Present Concerns, 18, 20).
Some wag has said that any person who is not a Marxist at age 20 has no heart, but anyone who is still a Marxist at 30 has no head. Lest we think that Lewis was soft in the head when he wrote his 1943 essay on equality, we should remember that he also confessed the limits of economic democracy. It provides a necessary medicine, he said, but man cannot live by medicine alone. Even so, he never relented in his critique of unbridled acquisitiveness. He feared that ours has become an irredeemably avaricious age, padding itself with pleasures and comforts.
His final essay, published shortly before his death on November 22, 1963, was entitled “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness.’” There Lewis warns against a culture bent on material gratification, especially of the sexual sort. Lewis denounces those men who cast aside their wives when they lose their youthful good looks, preferring young secretaries and instant sexual bliss. How much more might he lament the state of our culture if he had lived to see the divorce rate rise to nearly 60%? Yet it isn’t the divorce disaster alone that Lewis addresses; it’s our fatal delusion that the purpose of life is to have a good time, to be immediately and perpetually gratified:
"[That] fatal principle, once allowed [to enter the marital realm] … must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state or a society in which not only each man but every impulse in man claims carte blanche. And then, though our technological skill may help us to survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will—one dare not even add ‘unfortunately’—be swept away." (God in the Dock, 322)
We must never discount Lewis’s short fuse for the sins of the rich—and by the standards of the Third World, every person here present is rich. For while 40,000 people have been killed by terrorists during the last ten years, 40,000 children die daily from preventable diseases. Nor should we be surprised by what Lewis did with his very estimable royalties Walter Hooper, Lewis’s biographer, reports that Lewis gave away at least two-thirds of his wealth. Most of the gifts were bestowed anonymously, so that no one could congratulate Lewis for his philanthropy or name a building after him because of his benevolence.
Though he became a wealthy man, Lewis continued to wear the same out-at-the-elbows coat and broken-down shoes. Nor did he ever change houses, living always in the same modest home called the Kilns outside Oxford. When Lewis married Joy Davidman in 1956, she was appalled at the ratty furnishings, not only the chairs and sofas but also the draperies: they were woolen blankets that Lewis and his brother had used to pull over the windows during the wartime blackout of the 1940s!
© February 2006
RALPH WOOD is professor of Theology and Literature at Baylor University and author of The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth (Westminster John Knox Press, October 2003).
We must be ever so cautious not to turn this happy moment into an unhappy misuse of Lewis. Aslan will roar with real wrath if we make this movie into an occasion for Christian clucking. It is absolutely important that we not make a classic Christian story such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe into the latest weapon in the culture wars. The church of Jesus Christ is not a political party of either the left or the right. Christ calls us to offer the world—whether red or blue, whether black or white, whether yellow or brown or pink like me—a drastic counter-cultural alternative. Aslan forbid, therefore, that we Christians start saying to the secular world, with thumping self-satisfaction: “Look, we told you so long ago. We’re right, you’re wrong and now, with the overwhelming popularity of this movie, we can prove it. So get on board the Christian bandwagon and stop your whining about peace and justice and poverty. We Christians are running this country, and we have Aslan as our King, the Lion who will devour anyone who gets in our way.”
C.S. Lewis himself rejected all such Christian triumphalism. He knew, all too well, that we Christians have been guilty of terrible sins, and he called for us to repent of them. He called therefore for some Christian to volunteer to write “the full confession of … of Christendom’s specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery. Large areas of ‘the World’ will not hear us till we have publicly disowned much of our past. Why should they? We have shouted the name of Christ and enacted the service of Moloch” (The Four Loves, 49). Moloch is the pagan deity whose worship requires the sacrifice of children.
In making this startling claim, Lewis has in mind not only the medieval pograms against Jews, not only the Crusades and the Inquisition, but also our own Protestant sins—not only Luther’s slaughter of 20,000 peasants and Calvin’s burning of Servetus at the stake, but also the Salem Witchcraft trials in our own country, as well as our Christian complicity in the German Holocaust and the Soviet Gulag. We Christians have blood on our hands, and therefore we have no business setting ourselves up as some pristine party of the pure and the holy.
Lewis abominated all attempts to politicize his work, knowing well that all too many Conservatives would have been eager to make him their literary saint. When in 1951 the Tory government of Winston Churchill offered Lewis the extraordinary distinction of being made a Commander of the British Empire, he politely declined:
"There are always knaves … who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist [i.e., right-wing] propaganda, and my appearance in the Honours List wd. of course strengthen their hands. It is therefore better that I shd. not appear there. "(Letters, p. 235)
Though politically conservative, Lewis expressed his gratitude to Britain’s welfare state for providing a ground floor of economic security to every citizen, thus protecting the natively weak against the all-devouring strong. “Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall,” he wrote in 1943; they are necessary protections “against cruelty.” “We Britons,” Lewis added, “should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy.” He concluded, ever so tellingly, that “we still need more of the economic” kind of democracy (Present Concerns, 18, 20).
Some wag has said that any person who is not a Marxist at age 20 has no heart, but anyone who is still a Marxist at 30 has no head. Lest we think that Lewis was soft in the head when he wrote his 1943 essay on equality, we should remember that he also confessed the limits of economic democracy. It provides a necessary medicine, he said, but man cannot live by medicine alone. Even so, he never relented in his critique of unbridled acquisitiveness. He feared that ours has become an irredeemably avaricious age, padding itself with pleasures and comforts.
His final essay, published shortly before his death on November 22, 1963, was entitled “We Have No ‘Right to Happiness.’” There Lewis warns against a culture bent on material gratification, especially of the sexual sort. Lewis denounces those men who cast aside their wives when they lose their youthful good looks, preferring young secretaries and instant sexual bliss. How much more might he lament the state of our culture if he had lived to see the divorce rate rise to nearly 60%? Yet it isn’t the divorce disaster alone that Lewis addresses; it’s our fatal delusion that the purpose of life is to have a good time, to be immediately and perpetually gratified:
"[That] fatal principle, once allowed [to enter the marital realm] … must sooner or later seep through our whole lives. We thus advance toward a state or a society in which not only each man but every impulse in man claims carte blanche. And then, though our technological skill may help us to survive a little longer, our civilization will have died at heart, and will—one dare not even add ‘unfortunately’—be swept away." (God in the Dock, 322)
We must never discount Lewis’s short fuse for the sins of the rich—and by the standards of the Third World, every person here present is rich. For while 40,000 people have been killed by terrorists during the last ten years, 40,000 children die daily from preventable diseases. Nor should we be surprised by what Lewis did with his very estimable royalties Walter Hooper, Lewis’s biographer, reports that Lewis gave away at least two-thirds of his wealth. Most of the gifts were bestowed anonymously, so that no one could congratulate Lewis for his philanthropy or name a building after him because of his benevolence.
Though he became a wealthy man, Lewis continued to wear the same out-at-the-elbows coat and broken-down shoes. Nor did he ever change houses, living always in the same modest home called the Kilns outside Oxford. When Lewis married Joy Davidman in 1956, she was appalled at the ratty furnishings, not only the chairs and sofas but also the draperies: they were woolen blankets that Lewis and his brother had used to pull over the windows during the wartime blackout of the 1940s!
© February 2006
'Sopranos' sings one last time
Posted 3/1/2006 10:26 PM
By Gary Levin, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — The Sopranos unfolds its sixth season March 12 after the show's longest break yet: an interminable 21 months. But while fans are undoubtedly excited, TV's favorite New Jersey Mob family is down in the dumps.
The arrest of New York rival Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni, now seen in an orange prison jumpsuit, has upended the Soprano family. It renews simmering tensions between the clans and turns up the heat as the feds seem to close in.
Each season has its own recurring theme. This one is "dissatisfaction with one's life, failed expectations," says Michael Imperioli, who plays Tony's cousin Christopher.
"I think it's darker," says Lorraine Bracco, whose Dr. Melfi knows a thing or two about diagnoses. "I don't think it's desperation, but it's despair."
"They're on edge, disquieted, off balance," says creator David Chase, philosophically mulling.
"What a short time we're on this Earth." Johnny's dire straits weigh heavily on Tony: "It affects him a lot. He only has to look at his friend across the river to see one version of his future."
It all adds gravitas to what producer (and Paramount Pictures chairman) Brad Grey calls "our best season, elegantly written and very rich."
The series wraps production on its 12-episode season just as it returns to HBO March 12 (Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT).
After a few months off, actors return in June to film eight final "bonus" episodes, due next January. Chase says he agreed to extend the series when he couldn't fit two important plots into the upcoming batch. But he's sticking with his original plan for how to end it, which he conceived more than two years ago.
Like most things Sopranos, the end is shrouded in secrecy: The show's stars say they have no clue about their own fates.
"I will not give up any info," longtime director Tim Van Patten says. "My friends know better than to ask; omertà reigns supreme."
Things kick into high gear with a momentous event near the end of the premiere. Look for major story lines involving Soprano son A.J. (Robert Iler), who gets a job, and Mob lieutenant Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri, who has "two very big personal issues that he deals with this year that are monumental," actor Tony Sirico says.
Bracco says she, too, has more screen time, "which I'm happy about, but it's also fun because it means Tony's trying to work it out" with his longtime therapist.
In the series' second overseas trip — following Season 2's sojourn to Italy — Carmela and Rosalie Aprile win a trip to Paris. And the wiseguys take center stage with plenty of maneuvering for position and influence.
"There's a lot of jockeying going on, and that in itself should provoke a lot of fans' interest," Sirico says.
Great attention to detail
There was plenty of movement on five vast soundstages at Silvercup Studios here last month as Gandolfini, Edie Falco (Mob wife Carmela) and Iler filmed a tense family scene in the Soprano living room. The room is part of a meticulously crafted copy of a real suburban McMansion in North Caldwell, N.J., that was used in the series pilot. But this season, the series spent more time on location in New Jersey than ever before.
Each episode takes about eight days to prepare and 15 to film, double the length of a typical network drama. The shoot is preceded by "tone meetings" with Chase, at which minutiae and an overall vibe to each episode are discussed. "It may not seem like it, but these are complicated story lines, so it takes a lot of work," Van Patten says. "Part of the success of the show is it's so detailed."
Viewers may be forgiven if they're hazy on such details or exactly where the show left off in — wow — June 2004. (Tony and Carmela reconciled, Sack was arrested, Christopher's fiancée, Adriana, was whacked and cousin Tony Blundetto was blown away by Soprano, who spared him from torture.)
"I don't remember where we left off, in a way," Gandolfini says. "The last hiatus was long, and it took a while to get back in" when shooting resumed in April.
"I personally prefer a month and a half off and get back to work. You get into kind of a groove."
Says Sirico, echoing the now-familiar complaints of viewers who are unaccustomed to such interminable breaks: "Coming back was wonderful. In terms of waiting to come back, it was horrible."
Bracco says she and fellow castmates tired of answering the same question for fans: When? "We just wanted to get T-shirts that said, 'Shut up, already!' "
But if history is any guide, most think the portrayal of a typical suburban family with a very atypical occupation is worth the wait. It's the most-watched series ever to air on cable; it averaged 9.8 million Sunday viewers for its fifth season and 11 million for its fourth. And it's one of TV's most acclaimed series, with multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards, including the best-drama Emmy in 2004.
Befitting a show in its sixth season, characters have matured since the premiere in January 1999.
Tony is now "a middle-aged man, and he's not immune to any of those changes that happen, both physical and psychological, and emotional," Chase says. (He does seem to have put on weight.)
"Tony has mellowed a little bit, just out of necessity," Gandolfini says. "He was driving himself crazy, so he has calmed down."
And just as he and Carmela have recovered from a stormy fifth season of marital discord, his relationship with protégé Christopher "is becoming more one of equals, which is probably good."
"Christopher has matured," Imperioli says, to the point of ratting out his snitching fiancée. "I guess he sees himself more as an equal than he actually is with Tony. He has gotten closer to him in life experience, (where) there was much more of a generation gap" in earlier seasons.
But the biggest changes this season are in Soprano offspring Meadow and A.J., who have grown up and are now more aware of their dad's Mob life, enjoying its perks and yet struggling to deal with it.
"Neither one of those kids are kids anymore, and yet they're not prepared to be adults," Chase says.
This season's guest stars include Julianna Margulies (ER), who plays a real estate agent named Julianna; Hal Holbrook as a former Bell Labs scientist who crosses paths with Tony; Ben Kingsley as himself; and Elizabeth Bracco (Lorraine's sister) as a wiseguy's wife. Also returning are Jerry Adler (Hesh), Tim Daly and Frankie Valli.
Though he has changed his mind twice before, Chase insists this season really will be the last. He agreed to next winter's eight episodes — a pattern identical to the final year of Sex and the City - for creative reasons.
"There were two story lines that were supposed to be in the final season that we never got to, we never had room for," he says. "One of them ties all the way back to the beginning of the show."
Plans for what's next
Chase is asked why he thinks fans are so passionate about the series. "I would wish it was because of the top writers, that it didn't make sense some of the time, it was well executed, and it was mysterious," he says. "Maybe The Sopranos is happening down the street."
Although there is plenty of work to do, cast and crew already are thinking of life after the show.
Gandolfini is still toying with playing Ernest Hemingway in a biopic, though he's finding it a long and difficult process to set up the project at a studio.
Sirico hopes to play second fiddle in a sitcom "as somebody's Uncle Carmine, just out of the can. That would be fun."
Imperioli is waiting for "whatever comes along" and says he doesn't necessarily favor movies over television.
But Chase wants to make a feature film and is mulling ideas for a comedy or psychological thriller.
Now that the final season is extended, a Sopranos movie is less likely, though the actors say they're game. Even Chase "couldn't rule out the fact that somebody might want to do a movie that takes place over one or two days in 2005, something that happened in the last Sopranos you never saw," as a stand-alone prequel to this season.
Gandolfini has another idea: "I was hoping we'd do a Gilligan's Island dream. I'd be the captain, and I'd pin him with a hat all the time. Edie and Sharon (Angela, who plays Rosalie) can be Marianne and Ginger. The professor would be Stevie Van Zandt," aka Silvio Dante. And Steve R. Schirripa, who plays Tony's new brother-in-law Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri: "Thurston Howell."
By Gary Levin, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — The Sopranos unfolds its sixth season March 12 after the show's longest break yet: an interminable 21 months. But while fans are undoubtedly excited, TV's favorite New Jersey Mob family is down in the dumps.
The arrest of New York rival Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni, now seen in an orange prison jumpsuit, has upended the Soprano family. It renews simmering tensions between the clans and turns up the heat as the feds seem to close in.
Each season has its own recurring theme. This one is "dissatisfaction with one's life, failed expectations," says Michael Imperioli, who plays Tony's cousin Christopher.
"I think it's darker," says Lorraine Bracco, whose Dr. Melfi knows a thing or two about diagnoses. "I don't think it's desperation, but it's despair."
"They're on edge, disquieted, off balance," says creator David Chase, philosophically mulling.
"What a short time we're on this Earth." Johnny's dire straits weigh heavily on Tony: "It affects him a lot. He only has to look at his friend across the river to see one version of his future."
It all adds gravitas to what producer (and Paramount Pictures chairman) Brad Grey calls "our best season, elegantly written and very rich."
The series wraps production on its 12-episode season just as it returns to HBO March 12 (Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT).
After a few months off, actors return in June to film eight final "bonus" episodes, due next January. Chase says he agreed to extend the series when he couldn't fit two important plots into the upcoming batch. But he's sticking with his original plan for how to end it, which he conceived more than two years ago.
Like most things Sopranos, the end is shrouded in secrecy: The show's stars say they have no clue about their own fates.
"I will not give up any info," longtime director Tim Van Patten says. "My friends know better than to ask; omertà reigns supreme."
Things kick into high gear with a momentous event near the end of the premiere. Look for major story lines involving Soprano son A.J. (Robert Iler), who gets a job, and Mob lieutenant Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri, who has "two very big personal issues that he deals with this year that are monumental," actor Tony Sirico says.
Bracco says she, too, has more screen time, "which I'm happy about, but it's also fun because it means Tony's trying to work it out" with his longtime therapist.
In the series' second overseas trip — following Season 2's sojourn to Italy — Carmela and Rosalie Aprile win a trip to Paris. And the wiseguys take center stage with plenty of maneuvering for position and influence.
"There's a lot of jockeying going on, and that in itself should provoke a lot of fans' interest," Sirico says.
Great attention to detail
There was plenty of movement on five vast soundstages at Silvercup Studios here last month as Gandolfini, Edie Falco (Mob wife Carmela) and Iler filmed a tense family scene in the Soprano living room. The room is part of a meticulously crafted copy of a real suburban McMansion in North Caldwell, N.J., that was used in the series pilot. But this season, the series spent more time on location in New Jersey than ever before.
Each episode takes about eight days to prepare and 15 to film, double the length of a typical network drama. The shoot is preceded by "tone meetings" with Chase, at which minutiae and an overall vibe to each episode are discussed. "It may not seem like it, but these are complicated story lines, so it takes a lot of work," Van Patten says. "Part of the success of the show is it's so detailed."
Viewers may be forgiven if they're hazy on such details or exactly where the show left off in — wow — June 2004. (Tony and Carmela reconciled, Sack was arrested, Christopher's fiancée, Adriana, was whacked and cousin Tony Blundetto was blown away by Soprano, who spared him from torture.)
"I don't remember where we left off, in a way," Gandolfini says. "The last hiatus was long, and it took a while to get back in" when shooting resumed in April.
"I personally prefer a month and a half off and get back to work. You get into kind of a groove."
Says Sirico, echoing the now-familiar complaints of viewers who are unaccustomed to such interminable breaks: "Coming back was wonderful. In terms of waiting to come back, it was horrible."
Bracco says she and fellow castmates tired of answering the same question for fans: When? "We just wanted to get T-shirts that said, 'Shut up, already!' "
But if history is any guide, most think the portrayal of a typical suburban family with a very atypical occupation is worth the wait. It's the most-watched series ever to air on cable; it averaged 9.8 million Sunday viewers for its fifth season and 11 million for its fourth. And it's one of TV's most acclaimed series, with multiple Emmy and Golden Globe awards, including the best-drama Emmy in 2004.
Befitting a show in its sixth season, characters have matured since the premiere in January 1999.
Tony is now "a middle-aged man, and he's not immune to any of those changes that happen, both physical and psychological, and emotional," Chase says. (He does seem to have put on weight.)
"Tony has mellowed a little bit, just out of necessity," Gandolfini says. "He was driving himself crazy, so he has calmed down."
And just as he and Carmela have recovered from a stormy fifth season of marital discord, his relationship with protégé Christopher "is becoming more one of equals, which is probably good."
"Christopher has matured," Imperioli says, to the point of ratting out his snitching fiancée. "I guess he sees himself more as an equal than he actually is with Tony. He has gotten closer to him in life experience, (where) there was much more of a generation gap" in earlier seasons.
But the biggest changes this season are in Soprano offspring Meadow and A.J., who have grown up and are now more aware of their dad's Mob life, enjoying its perks and yet struggling to deal with it.
"Neither one of those kids are kids anymore, and yet they're not prepared to be adults," Chase says.
This season's guest stars include Julianna Margulies (ER), who plays a real estate agent named Julianna; Hal Holbrook as a former Bell Labs scientist who crosses paths with Tony; Ben Kingsley as himself; and Elizabeth Bracco (Lorraine's sister) as a wiseguy's wife. Also returning are Jerry Adler (Hesh), Tim Daly and Frankie Valli.
Though he has changed his mind twice before, Chase insists this season really will be the last. He agreed to next winter's eight episodes — a pattern identical to the final year of Sex and the City - for creative reasons.
"There were two story lines that were supposed to be in the final season that we never got to, we never had room for," he says. "One of them ties all the way back to the beginning of the show."
Plans for what's next
Chase is asked why he thinks fans are so passionate about the series. "I would wish it was because of the top writers, that it didn't make sense some of the time, it was well executed, and it was mysterious," he says. "Maybe The Sopranos is happening down the street."
Although there is plenty of work to do, cast and crew already are thinking of life after the show.
Gandolfini is still toying with playing Ernest Hemingway in a biopic, though he's finding it a long and difficult process to set up the project at a studio.
Sirico hopes to play second fiddle in a sitcom "as somebody's Uncle Carmine, just out of the can. That would be fun."
Imperioli is waiting for "whatever comes along" and says he doesn't necessarily favor movies over television.
But Chase wants to make a feature film and is mulling ideas for a comedy or psychological thriller.
Now that the final season is extended, a Sopranos movie is less likely, though the actors say they're game. Even Chase "couldn't rule out the fact that somebody might want to do a movie that takes place over one or two days in 2005, something that happened in the last Sopranos you never saw," as a stand-alone prequel to this season.
Gandolfini has another idea: "I was hoping we'd do a Gilligan's Island dream. I'd be the captain, and I'd pin him with a hat all the time. Edie and Sharon (Angela, who plays Rosalie) can be Marianne and Ginger. The professor would be Stevie Van Zandt," aka Silvio Dante. And Steve R. Schirripa, who plays Tony's new brother-in-law Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri: "Thurston Howell."
Srdja Trifkovic: The Hidden Idiocy Behind the Port Deal
Thursday, February 23, 2006
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org
President George W. Bush has declared that he would veto any congressional attempt to derail a contract allowing a Middle Eastern company to run six major U.S. seaports. His administration has approved the $6.8 billion deal between the London-based P&O (Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company) and Dubai Ports World—which is owned by the United Arab Emirates—to operate ports in Baltimore, Miami, Newark, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.
The opposition to the deal has been instant, vociferous, and unprecedentedly bipartisan. The resistance to the proposed transaction within his own party is likely to exceed the rebellion last fall over his nomination of Harriet Miers. Informed Washingtonians predict that Bush will be forced into yet another embarrassing retreat; the issue, it appears, is not “if” but “when,” and at what political cost to himself.
So far the critics have focused on the reliability of the UAE as an American “ally,” the extent to which Dubai Ports World could be used as a means of terrorist penetration of a highly vulnerable segment of the nation’s infrastructure, and the lack of transparency and procedural safeguards preceding the deal. Seven specific arguments have been advanced:
1. While nominally the paragon of Arab striving for modernity, Dubai and the rest of the Emirates are inhabited by people not only similar to their Muslim brethren elsewhere, but disproportionately inclined to Islamic terrorism. There are barely a million UAE citizens, but they included two of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks—including Marwan al Shehhi, who—according to the FBI—flew United Airlines flight 175 into the second World Trade Center tower.
2. Several of the 9-11 hijackers and planners traveled through the UAE or stayed there while preparing the attack, and its banking system was used to move funds used in the operation. This has prompted critics to call the Emirates “an operational and financial base for the hijackers” who carried out the 9-11 attacks.
3. Only three countries in the world recognized the Taliban regime in Afghanistan: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan—and the UAE. Entrusting the running of America’s ports to a company owned by one of those three governments is inherently unsafe.
4. According to a bipartisan congressional letter of protest sent to the Administration last week, the UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran and North Korea. If such shipments, many of them bulky, passed undetected, the UAE government is guilty either of gross negligence or of complicity.
5. The management structure, hiring policies, and external supervision of the company itself are flawed. “There are conditions, which shows they had concerns, but it’s all procedural and relies entirely on good faith,” according to Rep. Pete King, a Republican from New York and the House homeland security chief, but “there’s nothing those conditions . . . nothing that assures us they’re not hiring someone with bin Laden.”
6. The plan was not subjected to any proper evaluation by the Department of Homeland Security. Its administrators obediently rubber-stamped it, but its senior security analysts were surreptitious bypassed. They “were never told [about it] and they don’t like it now.”
7. The Dubai firm has unnaturally close ties to the White House. Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that approved the deal, was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to Dubai Ports World for $1.15 billion in 2004—one year after Snow left for President Bush’s cabinet. David Sanborn, currently in charge of Dubai Ports World’s European and Latin American operations, “was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.”
To all that, the President responded with an ill-tempered challenge: “I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a [British] company,” he told reporters. The idiocy of such thinking, rather than any specific security threat, is the real reason why this deal must be called off. It reflects his enduring ideological commitment to the fiction that there are good Muslims, who are our friends and allies and whose countries are every bit as “normal” as Great Britain, Canada, or Japan; and then there are some bad apples who have “hijacked a great religion.”
Bush’s logic in defending the right of a Middle Eastern company to enjoy the same access to America’s strategic infrastructure as a British company is the same logic that has granted millions of Muslims equal access to this country’s green cards and passports, thus creating the main terrorist threat that America faces today. It is the logic of globalization and anti-discriminationism. It is not merely flawed, it is evil, and it presents a mortal danger to our civilization.
/Policy print permanent link writebacks (26)
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org
President George W. Bush has declared that he would veto any congressional attempt to derail a contract allowing a Middle Eastern company to run six major U.S. seaports. His administration has approved the $6.8 billion deal between the London-based P&O (Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company) and Dubai Ports World—which is owned by the United Arab Emirates—to operate ports in Baltimore, Miami, Newark, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.
The opposition to the deal has been instant, vociferous, and unprecedentedly bipartisan. The resistance to the proposed transaction within his own party is likely to exceed the rebellion last fall over his nomination of Harriet Miers. Informed Washingtonians predict that Bush will be forced into yet another embarrassing retreat; the issue, it appears, is not “if” but “when,” and at what political cost to himself.
So far the critics have focused on the reliability of the UAE as an American “ally,” the extent to which Dubai Ports World could be used as a means of terrorist penetration of a highly vulnerable segment of the nation’s infrastructure, and the lack of transparency and procedural safeguards preceding the deal. Seven specific arguments have been advanced:
1. While nominally the paragon of Arab striving for modernity, Dubai and the rest of the Emirates are inhabited by people not only similar to their Muslim brethren elsewhere, but disproportionately inclined to Islamic terrorism. There are barely a million UAE citizens, but they included two of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks—including Marwan al Shehhi, who—according to the FBI—flew United Airlines flight 175 into the second World Trade Center tower.
2. Several of the 9-11 hijackers and planners traveled through the UAE or stayed there while preparing the attack, and its banking system was used to move funds used in the operation. This has prompted critics to call the Emirates “an operational and financial base for the hijackers” who carried out the 9-11 attacks.
3. Only three countries in the world recognized the Taliban regime in Afghanistan: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan—and the UAE. Entrusting the running of America’s ports to a company owned by one of those three governments is inherently unsafe.
4. According to a bipartisan congressional letter of protest sent to the Administration last week, the UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran and North Korea. If such shipments, many of them bulky, passed undetected, the UAE government is guilty either of gross negligence or of complicity.
5. The management structure, hiring policies, and external supervision of the company itself are flawed. “There are conditions, which shows they had concerns, but it’s all procedural and relies entirely on good faith,” according to Rep. Pete King, a Republican from New York and the House homeland security chief, but “there’s nothing those conditions . . . nothing that assures us they’re not hiring someone with bin Laden.”
6. The plan was not subjected to any proper evaluation by the Department of Homeland Security. Its administrators obediently rubber-stamped it, but its senior security analysts were surreptitious bypassed. They “were never told [about it] and they don’t like it now.”
7. The Dubai firm has unnaturally close ties to the White House. Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that approved the deal, was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to Dubai Ports World for $1.15 billion in 2004—one year after Snow left for President Bush’s cabinet. David Sanborn, currently in charge of Dubai Ports World’s European and Latin American operations, “was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.”
To all that, the President responded with an ill-tempered challenge: “I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a [British] company,” he told reporters. The idiocy of such thinking, rather than any specific security threat, is the real reason why this deal must be called off. It reflects his enduring ideological commitment to the fiction that there are good Muslims, who are our friends and allies and whose countries are every bit as “normal” as Great Britain, Canada, or Japan; and then there are some bad apples who have “hijacked a great religion.”
Bush’s logic in defending the right of a Middle Eastern company to enjoy the same access to America’s strategic infrastructure as a British company is the same logic that has granted millions of Muslims equal access to this country’s green cards and passports, thus creating the main terrorist threat that America faces today. It is the logic of globalization and anti-discriminationism. It is not merely flawed, it is evil, and it presents a mortal danger to our civilization.
/Policy print permanent link writebacks (26)
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