God Bless America

Two articles worth reading: Haroon Siddiqui has a fair and well-balanced article in the Ideas section of the Sunday, 20 August Toronto Star entitled The Muslim Malaise George Soros’ article in the Wall Street Journal entitled A Self-Defeating War is also worthwhile and is published at the TPM Cafe. Here are some excerpts: “The war on terror is a false metaphor that has led to counterproductive and self-defeating policies…Unfortunately, the “war on terror” metaphor was uncritically accepted by the American public as the obvious response to 9/11. It is now widely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder.…

Last night was a good night for me. I was flipping channels because the Law and Order episode on TNT was one that I had previously seen. As a was bypassing all of the reality shows (Are people really this shallow? If there is to be a clash of civilisations as the both the Bush administration and Osama and his bearded minstrels seem to be taking all of us toward, the current state of American television, would lead one to conclude that it may be a fair fight.) Anyway back to the matter at hand. As I was flipping channels,…

I think this op-ed in the NYT hits the question of Hirsi Ali’s deportation right on the head. She wasn’t ejected because she professed her hatred for Islam (not the Muslims who brought her to her state), she’d been doing that for several years. She was ejected because she hates herself, therefore she was unable to look at the situation of refugees and asylum seekers with compassion and understanding. By creating the wall of legal misanthropy, so well-crafted against her own situation, she had to know she had to go. Update: If you are not already in love with the…