So Sioux Me

By Mark Hyman on 11.23.09 @ 6:07AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org

A North Dakota judge will hear arguments next month in a case of political correctness that has embroiled the state university for a number of years.

In 2005, the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced a complete ban on hosting post-season competition by 18 colleges that were using Indian mascots, logos or nicknames. The ban was to become effective in February 2006.

The NCAA made an assumption, jumped to a conclusion and adopted the politically correct viewpoint that using Indian heritage in such a manner was "hostile and abusive." The problem, it appears, is that no one bothered to check with the assumed aggrieved parties to determine if they were truly offended. Since the original announcement, the NCAA's political correctness offensive encountered the stiff defense of several universities and common sense.

The college sports governing body backed off its strident and absolute demand after learning that some Native American groups endorsed use of their tribal names by their adoptive schools. The NCAA relented and gave the go-ahead for Florida State, the University of Utah and Central Michigan University to continue using Seminole, Ute, and Chippewa, respectively, without the risk of facing the post-season ban.

Sensitivity toward the use of Native American symbols goes back a few decades. In the early 1970s, Stanford University and Dartmouth College jettisoned the nickname "Indians." Stanford chose as its replacement mascot the innocuous color, Cardinal. Dartmouth went so far as to select a dark shade of green formally known as PMS 349 and frequently referred to as Dartmouth Green as its official school color to complement its nickname of the Big Green.

As an aside, the legitimacy of the Ivy League school's color could be called into question. Would crayon-maker Crayola give a legal release to Dartmouth to poach Forest Green and claim the color as its own?

After more than 35 years, the Big Green nickname remains wildly unpopular and the college's student body has instead given unofficial approval to an animated beer keg as the school mascot. Now here is a healthy alternative to a school's politically incorrect use of a Native American mascot -- glorification of alcohol.

What is not yet known is how the NCAA will measure Native American approval or displeasure of a school's use of a generic nickname such as Indian, Redman or Brave in contrast to a more specific tribal name such as Seminole. Bradley University and the University of North Carolina-Pembroke both use the nickname "Brave" yet Bradley is on the NCAA banned list and UNC-Pembroke got a free pass. San Diego State was given NCAA okay for that school's use of Aztec for still unexplained reasons. Perhaps it is because Aztec represents not just an Indian tribe but is instead an entire civilization.

The NCAA signaled moral outrage at the University of North Dakota's Fighting Sioux nickname. Yet the association has remained silent on the fact that the school is (as are both the states of North and South Dakota) named after the Dakota tribe.

The NCAA's battle with UND has been raging for more than four years. Criticizing the Fighting Sioux nickname as racist, offensive and derogatory have been groups such as the school's faculty Senate and the state Board of Higher Education. They are seemingly undeterred by one significant group that wants the university to retain the nickname and logo. That is the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe, the nearby tribe from whom the school nickname is derived. The most absurd aspect of this politically correct ruckus is that non-native Americans are lecturing Native Americans on what should offend them. A hearing on the matter is scheduled in a county courtroom in early December.

Then there is the case of South Dakota's Huron College. The school was purchased in 2001 by the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and was renamed Si Tanka University, another American Indian name. The school closed its doors in early 2005 due to financial difficulties. Rumors have been rampant that the school may eventually be sold to a group anxious to reopen the college under its former name, Huron, which is another tribal name. Where to draw the line? Let's see: Native American school name -- good; Native American school nickname -- bad.

The imbroglio over Indian names is not limited to college sports. A recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court appears to have finally closed the door on a 17-year-old lawsuit against the National Football League's Washington Redskins for that team's logo. It was a New Mexico man who originally claimed the Redskins mascot and logo "is damaging to Native American peoples." However, according to Playboy magazine, 90 percent of Native Americans who were polled responded they were not offended by the Redskins mascot. Is disapproval by a single individual sufficient to terminate the use of a Native American symbol or does majority rule? More importantly, one could argue it has been this year's lackluster play and dismal won-loss record by the Redskins that is more damaging to its fan base than any nickname the team could use.

Perhaps a more comprehensive poll could be taken of American Indian attitudes and views on the use of Indian names. The NCAA could commission the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute to complete the task although an apparent conflict of interest exists since the school is named after a Connecticut area tribe.

It is entirely possible that before long we will hear from other interested parties who will protest the use of school mascots and nicknames they find offensive. Will the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals protest the use of Wildcats at the University of Kentucky? How do Satan worshippers feel about the Duke University Blue Devils? It may not be surprising if the National Education Association were to announce its opposition to Virginia Military Institute's misspelling of "cadets" as Keydets. Finally, could descendants of the sixth century B.C. Peloponnesians criticize Michigan State's use of Spartan?

Perhaps it is time for the PC police to take a long, deep breath and relax before contemplating any further action. Maybe all parties could sit down and calmly discuss the matter during a lunchtime meeting. I suggest a menu of German bologna and Swiss cheese on Jewish rye, with a helping of Amish sauerkraut, a slice of kosher pickle, a Greek salad with Italian dressing on the side, followed by a Danish pastry for dessert with a hot cup of Colombian coffee. After all, everyone should be reasonable about this and avoid using any racial, ethnic or national origin in a manner that any single person might decide is offensive and derogatory.


Mark Hyman is a commentator appearing nationally on the television stations of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.

Springsteen’s glorious goodbye—or is it?

Concert Review: Bruce Springsteen and the EStreet Band

Sunday night in HSBC Arena

By Jeff Miers
THE BUFFALO NEWS POP MUSIC CRITIC
http://www.buffalonews.com
Updated: November 23, 2009, 10:07 AM

The anticipation leading up to Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s Sunday night concert in HSBC Arena built over the months preceding the event, and became palpable over the course of the past 10 days, following the last sale of the last ticket for the show. By midday on Sunday, the city was Springsteen’s. There were folks hanging around looking for tickets, people hoping for a good spot in the pit based on the lottery wristband policy, and folks who’d just plain blown off the Bills game to come downtown early and tailgate.

Springsteen and Co. always draw, and draw big. But this time was different. First of all, Buffalo was the final stop on the “Working On A Dream” tour, and final shows on Springsteen tours are always killer. But the hint has lingered in the air, turned into a fait accompli in the minds of some fans, and a nagging tug of doubt in the minds of others — could this be the final E Street Band gig ever? Would Clarence Clemons’ health issues become too much for the “Big Man” to endure next time around? Had this magnificent band run its course?

Springsteen and the band weren’t offering any defining clues. In fact, this gig was so fiery, so passionate, so frankly youthful in its energy, its relentless pace, and its unfailingly evident belief in the power of rock ’n’ roll as an agent of transformation, that it seemed like the first gig by a new band than it did the final one from a crew of veterans.

In keeping with that idea, Springsteen opened with a brand new tune, the defiant “Wrecking Ball,” a song that could’ve been written for Buffalo — it’s a tune that stares economic dissolution in the eye and dares it to take its best shot.

From there, it took no time for the place to erupt, as Springsteen and band dug into the timeless “The River” for a pair of barnburners in the form of “The Ties That Bind” and “Hungry Heart.” Springsteen was in fine voice, his power undiminished by the passage of time, apparently. The title song from “Working On A Dream” followed, and its Roy Orbison-like cadences offered a more powerful attack on stage than in the song’s recorded form.

Springsteen then introduced his first album, the earthy, funky “Greetings From Asbury Park, N. J.,” which the band performed in its entirety, completing the cycle begun at the beginning of the fall leg of the “Working On A Dream” tour, which found the band playing every album from its inception through 1984’s “Born in the USA.”

“Greetings” was never really a full-on E Street Band album, mostly because the record failed to capture the band’s live sound, favoring instead a bohemian post-Dylan folk style that never really suited Springsteen. The songs, though, are magnificent, and the manner in which the band performed them on Sunday, can now take their place alongside the man (and the band’s) best work.

“Blinded by the Light” suggested the boardwalk funk that would flourish on the group’s second album, “The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle,” and handily outshone its studio version. “Growin’ Up” has shown up often in live sets over the years, and was stunning here.

But it was the rarely performed pieces like the dark, brooding “Mary Queen of Arkansas” and “The Angel” that offered the biggest surprises. These songs simply grew wings in their new arrangements. And of course, “For You” — a street poet’s take on the Romantic tradition in literature — simply reached its fingers into the chest and squeezed the heart for four minutes or so.

“Lost In the Flood” is Springsteen’s first proper epic, and it was played with bountiful fire on Sunday, particularly by the rhythm section of drummer Max Weinberg and bassist Garry Tallent.

“Greetings” completed, the band launched into a set that, in itself, probably would’ve justified the price of admission for most in the full house. “Waitin’ On A Sunny Day” led nicely into a poignant “Promised Land,” and then Springsteen mentioned longtime co-conspirator Steven Van Zandt, who happened to be celebrating his birthday.

Springsteen, following the presentation of cake and candles, introduced “Steve’s favorite song,” the “River” outtake “Restless Nights,” which was played beautifully and lent additional power by the harmony vocals of Van Zandt and singers Curtis King and Cindy Mizelle. Van Zandt also was treated to one of “Working On A Dream’s” most infectious tunes, the Byrds-like beauty “Surprise Surprise.”

The “request” section of the gig followed, and Springsteen— who’d spent much of the evening either reaching into the audience or diving headlong into it — gathered the signs begging for specific tunes from the crowd, while the band jammed its way through Booker T and the MG’s “Green Onions.”

A pair of holiday tunes — “Merry Christmas, Baby” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”—were greeted tumultuously, as was the “Tunnel of Love”-era tour favorite “Boom Boom,” a cover of the John Lee Hooker tune.

The band just did not seem to want to stop, for reasons that were abundantly obvious — if this was indeed it, then one of the most passionate and powerful groups in history is saying goodbye. I don’t know, though. These guys seem to be just getting warmed up. I think they just might be back.

Regardless, Sunday’s show was absolutely sublime. It was everything a great rock ’n’ roll show should be — intense, joyous, deeply musical, irreverent, sensual, romantic, incredibly fun. No band does it better.

jmiers@buffnews.com

SET LIST:
Wrecking Ball (with trumpeter Curt Ramm)
The Ties That Bind
Hungry Heart
Working on a Dream
Blinded By the Light
Growin' Up
Mary Queen of Arkansas
Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?
Lost in the Flood
The Angel
For You
Spirit in the Night
It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The Promised Land
Restless Nights
Surprise, Surprise
Green Onions
Merry Christmas Baby (with Curt Ramm)
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (with Curt Ramm)
(I Don't Want to) Hang Up My Rock and Roll Shoes
Boom Boom
My Love Will Not Let You Down
Long Walk Home
The Rising
Born to Run
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out (with Curt Ramm)
* * *
I'll Work For Your Love
Thunder Road
American Land (with Curt Ramm)
Dancing in the Dark
Rosalita (with Curt Ramm)
Higher and Higher (with Willie Nile and Curt Ramm)
Rockin' All Over the World

Winding down E Street: The last stop for the Boss and his band?

By Jeff Miers
The Buffalo News Pop Music Critic
http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/
November 19, 2009

On May 23, 1978, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band opened their "Darkness on the Edge of Town" tour with a torrid performance in Shea's Performing Arts Center. When the same band hits the stage tonight at HSBC Arena, Springsteen and the legendary E Street Band will be wrapping up a nearly two-year tour behind the "Working on a Dream" album.

Tonight's show in Buffalo is rumored — and widely believed — to be the final performance by the E Street Band as we have known it since those days of "Darkness on the Edge of Town." Both band members Clarence Clemons and Nils Lofgren in recent days have been noncommittal when questioned about the future of the band, but many longtime Springsteen followers are wondering.

"I really believe this is the swan song for the E Street Band as we have come to know it for the last 40 years," says author and Springsteen scholar Lawrence Kirsch, whose recent "The Light in Darkness" collects fan remembrances and photographs for a startling reminiscence on the 1978 "Darkness on the Edge of Town" tour. "The Buffalo concert should be an event — not just another tour-ending concert — but one that documents one of the greatest live performers of our time."

The 1978 Shea's show has become the stuff of legend, and can be seen as the launching point for what would be an almost uninterrupted succession of E Street Band tours over the next 30 years.

It's not surprising that Springsteen — a bus driver's son from New Jersey for whom rock 'n' roll meant first an escape from a grim, blue-collar reality, and later, a means of forging a new community through the music's populist tenets — has chosen Buffalo to frame what has to be considered one of the most inspired creative tenures by any single band.

Even if the choice was one based more on circumstance than volition, it's tempting to believe that there are no accidents when it comes to The Boss.

Buffalo is a city where Springsteen's stirring narratives, songs based on the struggles of working people to find some sort of transcendence amid stark, often daunting circumstances, resound with the clarity of a church bell on a crisp, cool morning.

The signs pointing to tonight's tour-ending performance being the E Street Band's last are myriad and difficult to ignore. Rumors began circulating some six months back, fed by speculation on fan-based message boards.

The death of founding member and keyboardist Danny Federici in April 2008; the recent health issues of saxophonist and Springsteen's onstage foil Clemons; hip-replacement surgeries for guitarist Lofgren; the fact that Springsteen himself turned 60 in September, though his in-concert energy level appears to be undiminished; the not-so-subtle hints dropped throughout the latter days of the tour by Little Steven Van Zandt that fans should see the band while they still can — all suggested that the future of the group was, at best, uncertain once the "Working on a Dream" tour ended.

Earlier this week, however, Backstreets.com dropped the big one when it announced that Springsteen and Co. would be performing its first album, "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.," in its entirety at the Buffalo show. This means, in effect, that the band in its fall tour has played every single one of its releases through 1984's mega-platinum "Born in the USA."

It's hard to view this as anything other than an attempt at closure.

Is the end near?

Within the E Street Band, lips are decidedly sealed regarding any retirements, though a little cursory reading-between-the-lines lends credence to Kirsch's conviction. In his recently published memoir "Big Man," Clemons makes it plain that the band has been closer to the end than the beginning for some time now. Clemons recently told the Associated Press that retirement "is something I think about. "I'll be 70 years old in a couple of years. I don't know how much energy I'll have left. That energy, I want to spend with my family."

No Clemons means no E Street Band. The camaraderie between Springsteen and Clemons, 67, has always been a major factor in the intimate connection between band and audience during the marathon shows the truest fans receive as more spiritual ritual than entertainment. The deep bond between the two has always been abundantly evident, and Clemons said the relationship has always been informed by "the passion of love and respect and trust."

Clemons — who reportedly has had serious knee trouble, has undergone several hip-replacement surgeries, suffers from sleep apnea, and is currently in need of back surgery — has been less of a factor as a saxophonist over the past decade, but his presence during the band's shows is integral to the sense of community that, without fail, those shows parlay.

'Anxious to get ... home'

Guitarist Lofgren, himself recovering from surgery replacing both hips, refuses to dwell on any negative possibilities regarding the future of E Street.

"Every time a tour ends, there's a chance it could be the last one," the guitarist told The News last week in a phone interview. "We are all anxious to get back home, to catch up on other projects — and that includes Bruce, too, who has teenaged kids and a family life that is his primary concern.

"But there's no way to say for sure that this is the end. The band has never been better than it has been on this tour. We certainly have plenty more to say, musically, and Bruce is far from out of ideas as a songwriter."

Lofgren, who commenced his musical life fronting Grin, and was working with Neil Young by the time he was in his late teens, is the "new guy" on E Street. He joined the band when Van Zandt left following the recording of "Born in the USA," and has been a formidable presence on every tour since. Simultaneously, he has always managed to keep busy during E Street downtime.

Lofgren is now running a subscription-based, online music school through www.nilslofgren.com, one that he plans to devote increased attention to in the coming months. Last year, he released "The Loner: Nils Sings Neil," a gorgeous collection of acoustic guitar- and piano-based interpretations of his old friend and former boss' songs.

As both singer and guitarist, Lofgren is rightly held to be cream-of-the-crop, and certainly, there will be no shortage of work for him with or without the E Street Band. Still, he hopes the band will continue.

"Whenever he calls, I'll be there, I'll answer," says Lofgren of Springsteen.

Facing the future

For Springsteen megafans who have been following their man for any significant portion of time, imagining a life without new music and concert tours from the E Street Band is a seriously depressing notion. Outsiders and casual fans might find this a bit strange — it's only a rock 'n' roll singer and his band, after all. What's the big deal?

"If you gotta ask, you'll never know" seems like the only pertinent response. But author Kirsch has a more tolerant response.

"At first, it's hard to believe that one performer could possibly have touched this many people this deeply — lifted them from depression, kept them from suicide, helped them through divorce or the death of a parent, or worse, a child," Kirsch says, based on recountings in his book. "But many stories reveal just how much Springsteen's music and his almost superhuman presence on the concert stage have penetrated people's lives and, in as much as it is possible for music to do so, made them whole. In fact, there's a running theme of these reminiscences, one that is sure to warm any Bruce fan's heart: That you are not crazy.

"Not crazy for seeing dozens or even hundreds of concerts; not crazy for feeling that Springsteen's songs and lyrics have actually helped carry you through some of life's toughest moments; not crazy to think that this man whom you've never met has and continues to fill some kind of void in your life."

If tonight's concert does indeed end up being the final bow for the E Street Band, then man, they've had one hell of a run. There will indeed be a void in the musical landscape, for the group is one of the last of its era — an era when rock 'n' roll was a populist form, one that spoke directly to a community of informed listeners and imparted a commitment to something greater than the moment. It has been something you had to see to believe, something that needed to be deeply felt to be clearly seen. And at its best, there was nothing better.

It ain't over yet, though. Tonight's show is already a tightly packed powder keg of emotion. And hey, it's Little Steven's birthday.

Sounds like a good excuse for a party.


jmiers@buffnews.com

The still strong voice of a vanishing Britain

By Melanie Phillips
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
Tuesday, 17th November 2009

I have not had a moment until now to post up a comment on Robin Shepherd’s new book about the relationship between Israel and Europe, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel (Weidenfeld and Nicolson). It is a remarkable book by an author with a remarkable history.

Until a short while ago Shepherd, now Director of International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society, was a senior fellow at The Royal Institute of International Affairs -- commonly known as Chatham House -- in charge of its European programme. After two years he left in bitter circumstances, claiming he had been forced out principally because of his publicly expressed support for Israel – a version of events that Chatham House contests.


"Sir Galahad" By George Frederic Watts, 1862 Oil on canvas 75 1/2 x 42 1/8 inches (191.77 x 107 cm) Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachussetts, US

The fact remains, however, that his attitude towards Israel is one that is indeed unsayable within Britain’s foreign policy establishment, because it does not take an Arabist position but starts from the premise that Israel was not born in sin but is a legitimately constituted country legitimately entitled to defend itself against attack – and that the entirely illegitimate and unwarranted attacks upon it emanate not merely from the Arab and Muslim world but from the British and European intelligentsia, which in some ways are potentially just as lethal.

His book is therefore remarkable because it is a work by a member of that foreign policy intelligentsia which actually tells the truth about Israel and the Middle East conflict, and the often disgusting European attitude towards it which is unique in its mendacity and virulence. As he says, the terms and images with which Israel is associated in Europe – ‘shitty’, ‘Nazi’, ‘racist’, ‘apartheid’, ‘ethnic cleanser’, ‘occupier’, ‘war criminal’, ‘violator of international law’, ‘user of disproportionate force’ and so on -- are used about no other state, let alone one that is fully signed up to democracy and human rights for all its citizens, Arab as well as Jew, and are unique in their intensity and relentlessness. And as he says, the difference between the European demonisers of Israel and the likes of Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and David Duke in the US is that the European demonisers have a substantive presence right within the mainstream.

Shepherd wades through this filth and shows how it rests upon egregious falsehoods and twisted thinking. He observes correctly that

‘No-one of any degree of seriousness could claim that liberal-democratic Israel’s human rights record is worse than North Korea’s, China’s or Sudan’s and that it deserves the level of censure it attracts. There is not even the slightest shred of intellectual justification for charges that Israel is like Nazi Germany of apartheid South Africa.’

But of course, people of purported seriousness do subject it to just such censure and make precisely such charges.

He points out that this virulent and unique prejudice against Israel goes across the political spectrum from left to right. He observes that America is not immune from the contagion, and analyses the pathology of Mearsheimer /Walt and their support in the American academy. He cites the 2004 letter from 52 retired British diplomats, which expressed horror at the support for Israel of Bush and Blair, as evidence of the perverse and alarming tendency of such diplomats to sign up to narratives of hatred and deceit, tyranny and dictatorship. Offering a way out of the usual ‘anti-Israel attitudes are not the same as antisemitism’ conundrum, he suggests persuasively that the argument is all but irrelevant because the anti-Israel attitudes on display are bigotry, pure and simple, and all such bigotry is unacceptable. And asking why such perversity is consuming Europe, he suggests that a key reason is the loss of European self-belief. He writes:

‘The sickness here is civilisational. It reflects and draws upon the worst and the weakest in western political culture: its lack of self-belief, its ideological pathologies, its historical traumas, its relativism, its tendency to appease. It has rekindled an old problem which has sometimes appeared in traditional garb but more usually in a fully modernised, neo-antisemitic form in denigrating the most important Jewish project of our time.’

As a result of his experiences, Shepherd now writes a blog principally devoted to commenting upon the frenzy of bigotry against Israel and the Jews in British intellectual life. Shepherd is that increasingly rare phenomenon, a British intellectual of moral integrity. His principled and courageous stance on this, the greatest moral test of our age, reminds us of a Britain that is still there but alas fast disappearing -- a Britain that embodied decency and fairness and intelligence and a quiet but unyielding determination to stand up for right against wrong and face down the bullies and the bigots. Shepherd’s book is a must-read for all who want to understand this troubled continent of Europe and its British satellite (and cultural leader), and just how and why it is failing the civilisation test once again.

Boycott Burqa Barbie

By Phyllis Chesler
http://pajamasmedia.com/
21 November 2009

What will they think of next? A be-headed doll?

That’s right. I am talking about the new Burqa Barbie doll which is now on display in Florence, Italy, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Barbie doll. As my colleague over at weaselzippers wonders: Will clean-cut Ken now come (pun intended, ‘tis mine) with four burqa’ed Barbie doll wives?

Ah, I am such a Grinch. After all, the Burqa Barbie is being auctioned off for the Save the Children charity.

Save the Children? Surely, you must be jesting. I would like to save the children from this as well as from every other Barbie doll. (Yes, I know Barbie has diversified and now comes in every color and profession). But naked, even Doctor Barbie is still a pagan goddess or fertility figure but one with absolutely no relationship to female biology or reality.

Barbies are always anatomically impossible: their feet are pre-shaped for high heels, their breasts are high, firm, and perky—like Playboy dolls or surgically enhanced Hollywood stars. Bikini Barbie.

These dolls were so retro—or so I always thought. Well, shut my mouth, those were the good old days of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Now, Barbie is swathed, shrouded, in a burqa; now, she is even more hopelessly retro.

A woman, a girl, in a chador, chadari, burqa, cannot see that well. You cannot hear what she is saying. She cannot hear you. A woman in a burqa can’t run, or even walk that well. She stumbles. Inside, she has to balance a baby, a shopping bag, maybe a pair of glasses perched on her nose, slipping. If it’s hot, she is sweltering. If it’s sunny, she is still deprived of sunlight and Vitamin D. The burqa violates a woman’s human rights. It poses a danger to a woman’s health, both mental and medical.

The bikini and the burqa: What ever happened to women’s freedom?

I’ll tell you. While the bikini (especially as a symbol of pornography, prostitution, and promiscuity) was nevah (I say this with my best Barbra Streisand Brooklyn accent) a symbol of freedom, the western secular state never forced any woman to wear one; nor did her family. And, if a woman refused to wear a bikini, no one flogged, stoned, or honor murdered her. These things are happening to girls and women today all over the Islamic/Islamist world. They are happening in the West as well when young Muslim girls refuse to wear a modest headscarf.

A wonderful Muslim feminist hero just stayed with me for a week. She is a lawyer and an author, her name is Seyran Ates, she is a Turkish-German and lives in Berlin. Like Algerian-American professor, Marnia Lazreg, whose book about the Islamic Veil I’ve previously discussed, Ates absolutely opposes the veil in any form. She will not wear a headscarf. Ates is a religious Muslim woman.

Mattel: take Burqa Barbie off the market.

Parents: Boycott it.

Calling all Charities: Save the children from it.

Turning KSM into O.J.

By MARK STEYN
The Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/sections/opinion/
2009-11-20 11:27:30

My radio pal Hugh Hewitt said to me on the air the other day that Barack Obama "doesn't know how to be president." It was a low but effective crack, and I didn't pay it much heed. But, after musing on it over the past week or so, it seems to me frighteningly literally true. I don't just mean social lapses like his latest cringe-making bow, this time to Their Imperial Majesties The Emperor and Empress of Japan – though that in itself is deeply weird:
After the world superbower's previous nose-to-toe prostration before the Saudi king, one assumed there'd be someone in the White House to point out tactfully that the citizen-executives of the American republic don't bow to foreign monarchs. Along with his choreographic gaucherie goes his peculiar belief that all of human history is just a bit of colorful back story in the Barack Obama biopic – or as he put it in his video address on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall:

"Few would have foreseen on that day that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent."

Tear down that wall ...so they can get a better look at me!!! Is there no-one in the White House grown-up enough to say, "Er, Mr. President, that's really the kind of line you get someone else to say about you"? And maybe somebody could have pointed out that Nov. 9, 1989, isn't about him but about millions of nobodies whose names are unknown, who lead dreary lives doing unglamorous jobs and going home to drab accommodations, but who, at a critical moment in history, decided they were no longer going to live in a prison state. They're no big deal, they're never going to land a photoshoot for Vanity Fair. But it's their day, not yours. It's not the narcissism, so much as the crassly parochial nature of it.

Is it the only template in the White House speechwriters' computer? "Few would have foreseen at the Elamite sack of Ur /Napoleon's retreat from Moscow/the assassination of the Archduke Franz-Ferdinand/the passage of the Dubrovnik Airport Parking Lot Expansion Bill that one day I would be standing before you talking about how few would have foreseen that one day I would be standing before you."

Some years ago, when Ellen DeGeneres came out as a lesbian and ensuing episodes of her sitcom grew somewhat overly preoccupied with the subject, Elton John remarked: "OK, we know you're gay. Now try being funny." I wonder if Sir Elton might be prevailed upon to try a similar pitch at the next all-star White House gala: OK, we know you're black. Now try being president. But a few days later, Obama dropped in on U.S. troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea for the latest episode of The Barack Obama Show (With Full Supporting Chorus). "You guys make a pretty good photo op," he told them.

Hmm. Do I detect a belated rationale for the Afghan campaign?

Probably not. The above are mostly offenses against good taste, but they are, cumulatively, revealing. And they help explain why, whenever the president's not talking about himself, he sounds like he's wandered vaguely off-message. The other day, for example, he told Fox News that "if we keep on adding to the debt ... people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy in a way that could actually lead to a double-dip recession."

That's a great line – but not from a guy who plans to "keep on adding to the debt" as a conscious strategy. This is the president who made "trillion" the new default unit of federal budgeting, and whose irresponsibility is prompting key players around the world to consider seriously whether it's time to ditch the dollar's role as global reserve currency. But Obama's much-vaunted "bipartisanship," to which so many "moderate" conservatives were partial a year ago, seems to have dwindled down to an impressive ability to take one side of an issue in his rhetoric and another in his actions.

Which brings us to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. He'd been brought before a military commission, and last December indicated he was ready to plead guilty and itching for the express lane to the 72 virgins.

But that wasn't good enough for Obama, who, in essence, declined to accept KSM's confession and decided to put him on trial in a New York courthouse. Why? To show "the world" – i.e., European op-ed pages and faculty lounges – that America would fight terror in a way "consistent with our values," and apparently that means turning KSM into O.J. and loosing his dream team on the civilian justice system. But, having buttered up Le Monde and the BBC and many of his own Lefties by announcing that Mohammed would get a fair trial, Obama then assured NBC that he'd be convicted and was gonna fry.

So it's like a fair trial consistent with "our values," except for the one about presumption of innocence? If the head of state declaring you guilty and demanding the death penalty doesn't taint the jury pool, it's hard to see what would. The KSM circus is not, technically, a "show trial": He could well be acquitted. But, even if he is, he's unlikely to be strolling out a free man like Frank Sinatra beating the rap in "Robin And The Seven Hoods" and standing on the courthouse steps to sing "My Kind Of Town (Manhattan Is)" – although I wouldn't entirely rule it out: In a world in which the self-confessed perpetrator of the bloodiest act of war on the American mainland in two centuries is entitled to a civilian trial, all things are possible. The other day, Attorney General Eric Holder promised us that it would be "the trial of the century" – and he said it like it's a good thing.
Why would you do that?

So how's it playing with its intended audience? Alas, the world moves on. Not being George W. Bush may be enough to impress the 2009 Nobush Peace Prize committee in Oslo, but it's old news everywhere else. America's enemies have figured out that the Superbower is their best opportunity since their Seventies, and for America's friends the short version of the hopeychangey era to date is last week's cover story at the London Spectator showing an empty suit in the Oval Office over the headline "The Worst Kind Of Ally."

Hang on, wasn't that title retired with Bush? Well, no. Apparently, he routinely called up prime ministers hither and yon and kept them in the picture and up to speed. Obama doesn't have time for any of that: When he stiffed Poland on missile defense, he got Hillary to phone it in. The Poles, bless 'em, declined to take her call. In Delhi, meanwhile, they're horrified by Obama's performance in China. America's enemies smell weakness, and our allies feel only the vacuum of U.S. leadership. About himself, the president speaks loudly. For America, he carries a small twig.

©MARK STEYN

Film Reviews: 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon'

'New Moon' over bite

By KYLE SMITH
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
Posted: 1:00 AM, November 19, 2009

Twilight,” which was about a girl and a vampire who don’t hook up, is totally different from “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” which is about a girl, a vampire and a werewolf who don’t hook up. And it’s not at all like the next sequel, in which a girl, a vampire, a werewolf and a mummy fail to find romance, nor the one after that, in which the girl gets unfriended by all of the above plus the Invisible Man and King Kong — yet finds her heart aflutter when she befriends the Bride of Frankenstein.

“New Moon” is supposed to be an exciting love story plus monster action. So where’s the excitement? Where’s the action? Bella (Kristen Stewart) and vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) stare longingly past each other (Pattinson, who keeps entering in hilarious slo-mo, is so intent on smoldering at the camera that he seems to forget there’s another person around) and swap excruciating love-chat: “You can’t (long pause) protect me (longer pause) from everything.”

Bad dialogue, like bad news, doesn’t get better with age. This movie moves like the line at the post office. “Twilight” — that culture phenomenon that resembles “Star Wars” much as the prime minister of Belgium resembles the president of the United States (respective box office ranks of these two films in their respective decades: 71, 1) pushes its leads apart with thin contrivances that set up predictable last-minute rescues.

This time, Edward walks out on Bella for half the film because one of his family members almost jumps her when she cuts her finger. So Edward can best protect her by . . . leaving? Even though he knows she is being stalked by a rival clan of vampires? Not to mention a rival guy, buff Jake (Taylor Lautner), who, when angry, turns into a werewolf. They don’t kiss because if he ever got angry in her presence, he might maul her. So she’s stuck in thwart mode with him, too.

Director Chris Weitz proves that “The Golden Compass” was no fluke: He really is a non-master of action. His CGI werewolves, who look like they were designed by the animatronics crew at Disney’s Country Bear Jamboree, go at it in about three semi-OK bouts. These are by far the best scenes in the movie, but they cut off suddenly after a minute or two (you can almost hear the producer yelling, “That’s it for our budget, sorry”), as does a vigorous but pointless chase involving Bella’s redheaded vampire nemesis, Victoria.

The supposed climax, in which Edward goes to Italy to duel with a trio of Louis XVI-style vampire dandies, leads merely to a desultory bit of flinging around. Nor does an attempt to get all goth-y with a mention of hell succeed. The only real shudder-inducing moment comes not from a monster but from Bella’s dad: “You’re going to Jacksonville.” Noooooo!

Kyle.Smith@nypost.com


The Twilight Saga: New Moon

BY ROGER EBERT / November 18, 2009
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/

The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud.

"The Twilight Saga: New Moon" takes the tepid achievement of "Twilight" (2008), guts it, and leaves it for undead. You know you're in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have. Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart. Edward and Bella spend murky moments glowering at each other and thinking, So, here we are again.


Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart: How white the skin, how red the lips.

Bella (Kristen Stewart) is still living at home with her divorced dad (Billy Burke), a cop whose disciplinary policy involves declaring her grounded for the rest of her life and then disappearing so she can jump from cliffs, haunt menacing forests, and fly to Italy so the movie can evoke the sad final death scene from--why, hold on, it's Romeo and Juliet! The very play Edward was reciting narcissistically and contemptuously in an opening scene.

Yes, Edward (Robert Pattinson) is back in school, repeating the 12th grade for the 84th time. Bella sees him in the school parking lot, walking toward her in slow-motion, wearing one of those Edwardian Beatles jackets with a velvet collar, pregnant with his beauty. How white his skin, how red his lips. The decay of middle age may transform him into the Joker.

Edward and the other members of the Cullen vampire clan stand around a lot with glowering skulks. Long pauses interrupt longer ones. Listen up, lads! You may be immortal, but we've got a train to catch.

Edward leaves, because Bella was not meant to be with him. Although he's a vegetarian vampire, when she gets a paper cut at her birthday party one of his pals leaps on her like a shark on a tuna fish.

In his absence she's befriended by Jake (Taylor Lautner), that nice American Indian boy. "You've gotten all buff!" she tells him. Yeah, real buff, and soon he's never wearing a shirt and standing outside in the winter rain as if he were--why, nothing more than a wild animal. They don't need coats like ours, remember, because God gave them theirs.

Those not among that five percent of the movie's target audience that doesn't already know this will (spoiler) be surprised that Jake is a werewolf.

Bella: So…you're a werewolf?
Jake: Last time I checked.
Bella: "Can't you find a way to...just stop?
Jake (patiently): "It's not a lifestyle choice, Bella."

Jake is influenced, or controlled, or something, by Sam, another member of the tribe. He's like the alpha wolf. Sam and his three friends are mostly seen in long shot, shirtless in the rain, hanging around the edges of the clearing as if hoping to dash in and pick off some fresh meat.

Bella writes long letters to her absent vampire friend Alice (Ashley Greene), in which she does nothing to explain why she is helplessly attracted to these sinister, humorless and vain men. It can't be the sex. As I've already explained in my review of the first film, The Twilight Saga is an extended metaphor for teen chastity, in which the punishment for being deflowered I will leave to your imagination.

The movie includes beauteous fields filled with potted flowers apparently buried hours before by the grounds crew, and nobody not clued in on the plot. Since they know it all and we know all, sitting through this experience is like driving a tractor in low gear though a sullen sea of Brylcreem.


Just Bite Her Already

Tired of dashingly handsome vampires? Then skip The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

By Thomas S. Hibbs
http://www.nationalreview.com/
20 November 2009

If Elvis and Christopher Walken had a son, he would look like Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson), the dreamy-eyed vampire in Chris Weitz’s film The Twilight Saga: New Moon. The much-anticipated film is a sequel to the hugely popular Twilight, based on the best-selling series of books by Stephenie Meyer, who has found a teeny-bopper formula for repackaging the classic Wagnerian theme of love-death. If the screeches from the audience during the screening I attended are any indication, then this film will, like its predecessor, satisfy the romantic longings of its target audience: twelve-year-old girls. For that group, the endless focus on star-crossed lovers hurts so good; for the rest us, it just hurts.

As you may know, at the center of the plot is Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), a high-school student who has moved from Phoenix, where she lived with her mother, to a small town in the Pacific Northwest, to live with her father, a cop who devotes some of his time to tracking the mysterious source of brutal slayings. Bella, a withdrawn, brooding teen, draws the attention of the aloof Edward, who has previously shown no interest in any girl. Eventually, he reveals that he is a vampire, but not in a bad way. With his vampire family, he feeds only on animal blood, which he compares to tofu: It provides nourishment but never really satisfies. Danger thus lurks in every meeting between Bella and Edward. He might be tempted to feed on her, as might other members of his family; even if those temptations can be suppressed, there is the risk of Bella’s being caught up in the battle between the Cullen family and a group of much less principled vampires.

Twilight is the ultimate female teen romantic fantasy, about the awkward female outsider who finds a complex, deep, dark male outsider, the one all the other girls wish they had. In this case, standard teen romance becomes a kind of teen gnosticism, since here the brooding James Dean happens to have preternatural powers and is clued in to the secrets of the universe.

The filmmakers are clever enough to know that the real draw here is the seeming impossibility of the love between the two characters. In New Moon, Bella and Edward just happen to be studying Romeo and Juliet in class. The story is all about longing unrealized, never about what Shelley called “love’s sad satiety.” It is also about being addicted to the danger itself. As Edward says in one of many instances of clichéd dialogue: “You’re like my own personal brand of heroin.”

The dreadful dialogue is matched by poor filmmaking technique. The Pacific Northwest setting, with its gloomy weather and its heavily wooded landscapes, suits the plot perfectly. But the rest of the filmmaking is utterly uncreative. The film tediously repeats slow-motion shots, zoom shots, and encircling shots. There is also that cheesy glitter vampires sport when they are seen in the sun. Large werewolves appear on the scene via the crudest CGI in recent memory, and Edward communicates with Bella in a hologram reminiscent of Princess Leia’s appearance to Obi-Wan. Then there are the profound silences, as Bella and Edward, with eyes averted, bear the excruciating pain of a love that cannot be.

In New Moon, Edward decides to end the relationship permanently after a paper cut on Bella’s finger during her birthday party at the Cullen home has nearly tragic consequences. Unable to rid the world of the threat of paper, the Cullen family leaves town. Without Edward, Bella becomes despondent and self-destructive. Seeking risky pursuits — both because, whenever she is in danger, Edward makes one of his holographic appearances to admonish her, and because the girl simply loves danger — she begins motorbike riding with her Native American childhood friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). Whereas Edward was cold to the touch, Jacob is unusually hot. Edward is pale; Jacob, dark-skinned. But both are gorgeous and both harbor secrets. Repeating Edward’s pick-up line, Jacob tells Bella, “Go away. . . . I’m not good.” The girl has a thing for attracting handsome monsters, and she loves every minute of the pain.

In Edward’s absence, Bella actively cultivates pain because it is a “reminder.” One of her friends worries that she is suicidal, but she is not so much in love with easeful death as she is in love with the thrill of the constant risk of death — especially of a dramatic death. As she puts it in her opening voiceover in the first film, “I never really thought about death. . . . Dying for someone else would not be a bad way to go.”

One of the attractions of romanticism is that it counters the reductionist tendencies of the modern world. Romanticism reacts against the elimination of mystery from human life and the reduction of human sexuality to a mere appetite and of love to a contractual arrangement. As Roger Scruton argues (Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde), romanticism is a remedy for what ails the modern world — a “morbidly unheroic world,” dominated by “cost-benefit calculation,” which tempts us to regard our own existence as a “cosmic mistake.” The remedy is to “live as if a heroic love were possible, and as if we could renounce life for the sake of it.” Bella is in the grip of precisely such a vision. But we have serious reason to wonder how admirable her vision (or Scruton’s, for that matter) is. Her love-death passion is an escape from the banality of ordinary life: boring high-school classes with dull kids and a humdrum family life. The best thing about her father, Bella says, is that “he doesn’t hover.”

There is an attempt in New Moon to invest Bella’s dilemmas with some sort of moral, perhaps even metaphysical, significance, but the discussion of the soul she would lose in joining the undead is specious and vacuous. The film made me nostalgic for the days of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a TV series that extracted much greater humor from high-school existence and treated the loss of one’s soul with moral gravity and dramatic sensitivity. By contrast, Bella worries that if she doesn’t join the undead, she will grow old and become unattractive to the eternally dashing Edward. One shudders at the prospect of an eternity spent pondering self-indulgent romance masquerading as heroic self-sacrifice. Halfway through New Moon some viewers will likely have had enough. Those of us in this non-target audience have an urgent piece of advice for Edward: Just bite her already.

— Thomas S. Hibbs, an NRO contributor, is the author of Shows about Nothing.

Major Hasan’s Islamist Life

By Daniel Pipes
http://www.frontpagemag.com/
20 November 2009

As the Pentagon and Senate launch what one analyst dubs “dueling Fort Hood investigations,” will they confront the hard truth of the Islamic angle?

Despite encouraging references to “violent Islamists” by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Democrat of Connecticut), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, there is reason to worry about a whitewash of the massacre that took place on Nov. 5; that is just so much easier than facing the implications of a hostile ideology nearly exclusive to Muslims.

Indeed, initial responses from the U.S. Army, law enforcement, politicians, and journalists broadly agreed that Maj. Nidal Hasan’s murderous rampage had nothing to do with Islam. Barack Obama declared “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing” and Evan Thomas of Newsweek dismissed Hasan as “a nut case.”

But evidence keeps accumulating that confirms Hasan’s Islamist outlook, his jihadi temperament, and his bitter hatred of kafirs (infidels). I reviewed the initial facts about his record in an article that appeared on Nov. 9 but much more information subsequently appeared; here follows a summary. The evidence divides into three parts, starting with Hasan’s stint at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center:

* He delivered an hour-long formal medical presentation to his supervisors and some 25 mental health staff members in June 2007, the culminating exercise of his residency program at Walter Reed. What was supposed to be on a medical topic of his choosing instead turned into a 50-slide PowerPoint talk on “The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military” that offered such commentary as “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims” and the “Department of Defense should allow Muslims [sic] Soldiers the option of being released as ‘Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events.” One person present at the presentation recalls how, by the time of its conclusion, “The senior doctors looked really upset.”

* Hasan informed at least one patient at Walter Reed that “Islam can save your soul.”

* So apparent were Hasan’s Islamist proclivities, reports National Public Radio, that key psychiatry authorities at Walter Reed met to discuss if he was psychotic. One official told colleagues of his worries “that if Hasan deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak secret military information to Islamic extremists. Another official reportedly wondered aloud to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of committing fratricide,” recalling Sergeant Hasan Akbar’s 2003 rampage.

Then followed Hasan’s record at Ft. Hood:

* His supervisor, Captain Naomi Surman, recalled his telling her that as an infidel she who would be “ripped to shreds” and “burn in hell.” Another person reports his declaring that infidels should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

* In his psychiatric counseling sessions with soldiers returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, Hasan heard information he considered tantamount to war crimes. As late as Nov. 2, three days before his murderous spree, he tried to convince at least two of his superior officers, Surman and Colonel Anthony Febbo, about the need legally to prosecute the soldiers.

* Hasan routinely signed his e-mails with “Praise Be to Allah.”

* He listed his first name as Abduwalli, rather than Nidal, in the e-mail address in his official Army personnel record. ‘Abd al-Wali is an Arabic name meaning “Slave of the Patron,” where Patron is one of God’s 99 names. It is not clear why Hasan did this, but Abduwalli could have been a nom de guerre, this being a common practice among Palestinians (Yasir Arafat even had two them – Yasir Arafat and Abu Ammar).

The title page of Nidal Hasan’s PowerPoint demonstration for a medical lecture in June 2007, indicates how little interest he took in medicine and how much in the perceived contradiction between being a Muslim and an American soldier.

Finally, Hasan’s extracurricular activities revealed his outlook:

* He designed green and white personal business cards that made no mention of his military affiliation. Instead, they included his name, then “Behavior Heatlh [sic] Mental Health and Life Skills,” a Maryland mobile phone number, an AOL e-mail address, and “SoA (SWT).” SoA is the jihadi abbreviation for Soldier of Allah and SWT stands for Subhanahu wa-Ta‘ala, or “Glory to Him, the Exalted.”

* Hasan contacted jihadi web sites via multiple e-mail addresses and screen names.

* He traded 18 e-mails between Dec. 2008 and June 2009 with Anwar al-Awlaki, Al-Qaeda recruiter, inspiration for at least two other North American terror plots, and fugitive from U.S. justice. Awlaki had been Hasan’s spiritual leader at two mosques, Masjid Al-Ribat Al-Islami in San Diego and the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center outside Washington, D.C., and he acknowledges becoming Hasan’s confidant. Awlaki speculates that he may have influenced Hasan’s evolution and praises Hasan for the massacre, calling him a “hero” who “did the right thing” by killing U.S. soldiers before they could attack Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* In those e-mails, Hasan asked Awlaki when jihad is appropriate and about killing innocents in a suicide attack. “I can’t wait to join you” in the afterlife for discussions over non-alcoholic wine, Hasan wrote him. One Yemeni analyst calls Hasan “almost a member of Al-Qaeda.”

* “My strength is my financial capabilities,” Hasan boasted to Awlaki, and he donated $20,000 to $30,000 a year to Islamic “charities” outside the United States, some of it going to Pakistan.

* That Hasan, of Palestinian extraction, wore Pakistani clothing on the morning of his rampage points to his jihadi mentality.

* Hasan had “more unexplained connections to people being tracked by the FBI,” other than Awlaki, including some in Europe. One official characterized these as “Islamic extremists if not necessarily al Qaeda.”

* Duane Reasoner Jr., the 18-year-old Muslim convert whom Hasan mentored in Islam, calls himself a “extremist, fundamentalist, mujhadeen, Muslim” who outspokenly supports Awlaki, Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, Omar Abdur Rahman (the blind sheikh) and Adam Gadahn (Al-Qaeda’s top American figure).

These symptoms in the aggregate leave little doubt about Hasan’s jihadi mentality. But will the investigations allow themselves to see his motivation? Doing so means changing it from a war on “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” to a war on radical Islam. Are Americans ready for that?

Mr. Pipes (http://www.danielpipes.org/) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Travesty in New York

We are giving KSM a farcical show trial.

By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.nationalreview.com/
November 20, 2009, 0:00 a.m.

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the “propaganda of the deed.” And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 — not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

And now its self-proclaimed architect, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has been given by the Obama administration a civilian trial in New York. Just as the memory fades, 9/11 has been granted a second life — and KSM, a second act: 9/11, The Director’s Cut, narration by KSM.

Sept. 11, 2001 had to speak for itself. A decade later, the deed will be given voice. KSM has gratuitously been presented with the greatest propaganda platform imaginable — a civilian trial in the media capital of the world — from which to proclaim the glory of jihad and the criminality of infidel America.

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, in which the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

Moreover, everyone knows that whatever the outcome of the trial, KSM will never walk free. He will spend the rest of his natural life in U.S. custody. Which makes the proceedings a farcical show trial from the very beginning.

Apart from the fact that any such trial will be a security nightmare and a terror threat to New York — what better propaganda-by-deed than blowing up the entire courtroom, making KSM a martyr and making the judge, jury, and spectators into fresh victims? — it will endanger U.S. security. Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.

That’s precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden. “Within ten days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum,” wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.”

Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, to a military tribunal.

By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his November 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.

What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war which the U.S. itself has engaged in countless times?

By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?

Moreover, the incentive offered any jihadi is as irresistible as it is perverse: Kill as many civilians as possible on American soil and Holder will give you Miranda rights, a lawyer, a propaganda platform — everything but your own blog.

Alternatively, Holder tried to make the case that he chose a civilian New York trial as a more likely venue for securing a conviction. An absurdity: By the time Obama came to office, KSM was ready to go before a military commission, plead guilty and be executed. It’s Obama who blocked a process that would have yielded the swiftest and most certain justice.

Indeed, the perfect justice. Whenever a jihadist volunteers for martyrdom, we should grant his wish. Instead, this one, the most murderous and unrepentant of all, gets to dance and declaim at the scene of his crime.

Holder himself told the Washington Post that the coming New York trial will be “the trial of the century.” The last such was the trial of O. J. Simpson.

— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2009, The Washington Post Writers Group

Saints at a Cultural Crossroads

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AT THE END OF THE DAY, DIVERSITY HAS JUMPED THE SHARK, HORRIFICALLY

By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
November 18, 2009

It cannot be said often enough that the chief of staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: "Our diversity ... is a strength."

As long as the general has brought it up: Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian populations.

Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also look at the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare -- I mean the beautiful mosaics -- in Third World hellholes like Afghanistan, Rwanda and South Central, L.A.

"Diversity" is a difficulty to be overcome, not an advantage to be sought. True, America does a better job than most at accommodating a diverse population. We also do a better job at curing cancer and containing pollution. But no one goes around mindlessly exclaiming: "Cancer is a strength!" "Pollution is our greatest asset!"

By contrast, the canard "diversity is a strength" has now replaced "at the end of the day," "skin in the game," "blood and treasure," "jumped the shark," "boots on the ground," "horrific" (whatever happened to the perfectly good word "horrible"?), "not so much," "I am shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here," and "that went well," as America's most irritating cliche.

We should start making up other nonsense mantras along the lines of "diversity is a strength" and mindlessly repeating them until they catch on, too.

Next time you're at a cocktail party, just start saying, "Chocolate pudding is dramatic irony" from time to time. Eventually other people will start saying it, without anyone bothering to consider whether it makes sense. Then we'll do another one: "Nicolas Cage is a two-cycle engine."

Before you know it, liberals will react to news of a mass murder by muttering, "Well, you know what they say: Nicolas Cage is a two-cycle engine," while everyone nods in agreement.

Except mere nonsense makes more sense than "diversity is a strength."

If Gen. Casey's wildly inappropriate use of this lunatic cliche in the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre doesn't kill it, nothing will.

Among the worst aspects of America's "diversity" is that liberals' reaction to a heterogeneous population is to create a pecking order based on alleged victimhood -- as described in electrifying detail in my book,Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America.


In modern America, the guilty are sanctified, while the innocent never stop paying -- including with their lives, as they did at Fort Hood last week. Points are awarded to aspiring victims for angry self-righteousness, acts of violence and general unpleasantness.

But liberals celebrate diversity only in the case of superficial characteristics like race, gender, sexual preference and country of origin. They reject diversity when we need it, such as in "diversity" of legal forums.

After conferring with everyone at Zabar's, Obama decided that if a standard civilian trial is good enough for Martha Stewart, then it's good enough for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. So Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is coming to New York!

Mohammed's military tribunal was already under way when Obama came into office, stopped the proceedings and, eight months later, announced that Mohammed would be tried in a federal court in New York.

In a liberal's reckoning, diversity is good when we have both Muslim jihadists and patriotic Americans serving in the U.S. military. But diversity is bad when Martha Stewart and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed are subjected to different legal tribunals to adjudicate their transgressions.

Terrorists tried in civilian courts will be entitled to the whole panoply of legal protections accorded Stewart or any American charged with a crime, such as the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, the right to exclude evidence obtained in violation of Miranda rights, the right to a speedy trial, the right to confront one's accusers, the right to a change of venue, the right to examine the evidence against you, and the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence in one's defense.

Members of Congress have it in their power to put an end to this lunacy right now. If they don't, they are as complicit in Mohammed's civilian trial as the president. Article I, Section 8, and Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution give Congress the power to establish the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts and to create exceptions to that jurisdiction.

Congress could pass a statute limiting federal court jurisdiction to individuals not subject to trial before a military tribunal. Any legislator who votes "nay" on such a bill will be voting to give foreign terrorists the same legal rights as U.S. citizens -- and more legal rights than members of the U.S. military are entitled to.

In the case of legal proceedings, diversity actually is a strength.

COPYRIGHT 2009 ANN COULTER