Nine years after 9/11, let's stop playing into bin Laden's hands

by Ted Koppel

Washington Post
September 12, 2010

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.

The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams.

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Even now, Muslims must have faith in America

by Tariq Ramadan

Washington Post
September 12, 2010

Just a short time ago, Europe seemed to be the part of the West where fears of Islam were most evident, with its bitter controversies over headscarf bans or the construction of mosques in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Yet in recent weeks, America's relationship with Islam appears to have changed. The battle over a planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York and the proposed burning of the Koran by a Florida pastor have revealed similar worries, and journalists and intellectuals (including, ironically, European ones) have been quick to describe the rise of Islamophobia in America.

Polls show that nearly half of Americans have unfavorable views of Islam, and the fear of this faith in America is undeniable. But is it as simple as xenophobia and racism? I do not believe so. Natural and understandable concerns can be transformed into active rejection and open racism when political discourse and media coverage fan the flames for ideological, religious or economic interests. That is what is happening in America today.

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Turks Pass Constitutional Changes

Wall Street Journal
September 13, 2010

Turks voted to amend the nation's constitution by a wide margin Sunday, according to unofficial results, delivering a surprise boost to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamic-leaning government ahead of elections next year.

The referendum on a package of 26 constitutional amendments has been touted as a key battle in the struggle to determine Turkey's future by both sides: the country's secular establishment and a rising conservative elite that Mr. Erdogan represents. On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan appeared to win convincingly.

State television channel TRT1 reported that the amendment package won approval with a vote of 58% to 42%, with a turnout of about 78%. Most opinion polls had predicted a much tighter margin. The results aren't final.

"Once more it has been seen that transformation is possible within democracy," Mr. Erdogan said in an hour-long victory speech to party faithful in Istanbul on Sunday night. "Today, tonight the mind-set of those enthusiastic for coups has lost."

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Days After ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Ruling, Another Challenge Heads to Court

New York Times
September 12, 2010

For 17 years, Maj. Margaret Witt rose steadily through the Air Force and Air Force Reserves, winning plaudits from colleagues, strong performance reviews from superiors and service medals from the department. A flight nurse, she treated wounded troops during Desert Storm and was featured in Air Force promotional materials for years.

Major Witt is also a lesbian.

To hide her sexual orientation, she skipped military functions where dates were invited. She dodged questions about her personal life. And she avoided inviting colleagues home, lest some possession — a book, a photograph — might tip them off.

“You can’t be honest,” Major Witt, 46, said in a recent interview. “I didn’t want to answer questions, even to say what my weekend plans were.”

Her efforts to maintain a low profile ended in 2004, when the jilted husband of a woman Major Witt had started to date sent a note to the Air Force disclosing her orientation. After an investigation and hearing, the Air Force discharged her in 2007 under the policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

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The Size of Government and the Choice This Fall

by Arthur C. Brooks & Paul Ryan

Wall Street Journal
September 13, 2010

As we move into this election season, Americans are being asked to choose between candidates and political parties. But the true decision we will be making—now and in the years to come—is this: Do we still want our traditional American free enterprise system, or do we prefer a European-style social democracy? This is a choice between free markets and managed capitalism; between limited government and an ever-expanding state; between rewarding entrepreneurs and equalizing economic rewards.

We must decide. Or must we?

In response to what each of us has written in the preceding months, we have heard again and again that the choice we pose is too stark. New York Times columnist David Brooks (no relation) finds our approach too Manichaean, and the Schumpeter columnist in The Economist objected that, "You can have a big state with a well-functioning free market."

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Teresa Lewis didn't pull the trigger. Why is she on death row?

by John Grisham

Washington Post
September 12, 2010

The Commonwealth of Virginia already has a serious relationship with its death penalty. In the past three decades, only Texas has executed more inmates. But on Sept. 23, the Old Dominion will enter new territory when it executes a female inmate for the first time in nearly a century.

Her name is Teresa Lewis, she is the only woman on death row at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, and her appeals have all but expired. If she is executed, she will become another glaring example of the unfairness of our death penalty system.

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Is This America?

by Nicholas D. Kristof

New York Times
September 11, 2010

For a glimpse of how venomous and debased the discourse about Islam has become, consider a blog post in The New Republic this month. Written by Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, it asserted: “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims.”

Mr. Peretz added: “I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”

Thus a prominent American commentator, in a magazine long associated with tolerance, ponders whether Muslims should be afforded constitutional freedoms. Is it possible to imagine the same kind of casual slur tossed off about blacks or Jews? How do America’s nearly seven million American Muslims feel when their faith is denounced as barbaric?

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With $100 million Soros gift, Human Rights Watch looks to expand global reach

Washington Post
September 12, 2010

The $100 million gift to Human Rights Watch from billionaire George Soros announced last week will extend the overseas presence of the influential American rights champion and ensure its financial health for years to come.

But the goal of the gift is more ambitious still: to alter the way human rights are promoted in the 21st century, making rights advocacy less of an exclusively American and European cause.

The donation, the largest single gift ever from the Hungarian-born investor and philanthropist, is premised on the belief that U.S. leadership on human rights has been diminished by a decade of harsh policies in the war on terrorism. Soros said he hopes the money will cultivate a much broader constituency of foreign policymakers and philanthropists who embrace the notion that human rights should be observed universally.

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«Αιδώς Αργείοι»

της Άννας Φραγκουδάκη

Τα Νέα
11 Σεπτεμβρίου 2010

Μεγάλη δημοσιότητα έχει τελευταία σε όλα τα ελληνικά ΜΜΕ η πρόσφατη πολιτική μαζικών απελάσεων Τσιγγάνων που ασκεί η Γαλλία. Είναι πολιτική αντίθετη με τη μακρά ιστορία της χώρας και τη βαθιά ριζωμένη παράδοση υποδοχής μεταναστών και προσφύγων. Επανειλημμένα κύματα μεταναστών και πολιτικών προσφύγων από τον 19ο αιώνα καταφεύγουν στη Γαλλία από όλη τη Βόρεια Ευρώπη (ιδίως Πολωνοί, Τσέχοι, Ρώσοι, Αρμένιοι, Γερμανοί), αργότερα Ιταλοί και Ισπανοί και μετά τον Δεύτερο Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο οι πιο πολλοί από την Ασία και τη Βόρεια Αφρική.

Επιπλέον η πολιτική αυτή παραβιάζει το άρθρο (19/1) του Χάρτη των Θεμελιωδών Δικαιωμάτων της Ευρωπαϊκής Ενωσης που «απαγορεύει» τις απελάσεις. Ιδίως παραβιάζει τη θεσμοθετημένη αρχή που αποτελεί τον θεμέλιο λίθο της Ε.Ε. ότι κάθε πολίτης της Ενωσης είναι ελεύθερος να αναζητά απασχόληση, να εργάζεται, να εγκαθίσταται κ.τ.λ. σε κάθε χώρα μέλος, καθώς οι απελάσεις αφορούν μετανάστες από χώρες μέλη (ιδίως τη Ρουμανία).

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Ruling on military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy adds to gay rights momentum

Los Angeles Times
September 10, 2010

A ruling by a federal judge in California declaring the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy unconstitutional adds to growing momentum to end the nation's ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, and the only question may be whether Congress or the courts makes the decision.

In May, the House voted to repeal the ban, as did the Senate Armed Services Committee, and President Obama said he looked forward to signing a bill repealing the ban. "This legislation will make our armed forces even stronger and more inclusive by allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve honestly and with integrity," he said.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the repeal "the right thing to do."

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Pentagon eases rules for reporters covering Guantanamo trial

McClatchy
September 10, 2010

The Pentagon has revised its ground rules for reporters and photographers covering military trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earning praise from news organizations that had protested the policies as unduly restrictive.

The Defense Department issued new guidelines Friday, including not barring reporters who print information they've gathered independently of the detention camp, even if officials have deemed the information "protected."

News organizations in May had protested the Pentagon's decision to bar four reporters from Guantanamo for identifying an interrogator by name in stories written from Guantanamo. Though he was described in court only as "Interrogator No. 1," the interrogator's name had been known for years after he gave newspaper interviews.

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Near Ground Zero, mosque supporters gather to show their support

Washington Post
September 11, 2010

Hundreds of supporters of the proposed Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero gathered Friday evening near the site in Lower Manhattan, where they lit candles, sang and prayed on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The participants said they came to show solidarity with the plan to build the Park51 Islamic Center on Park Place, about two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The project has sparked fierce debate in recent weeks about whether it was appropriate to build such a facility so near the "hallowed ground" of the trade center's fallen twin towers, and it has prompted fears among some that anti-Islam sentiment is on the rise in the United States.

Organizers said they decided to hold the gathering a day before the Sept. 11 anniversary so that Saturday could remain a day of solemn mourning for those killed in the attacks nine years ago.

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A Muslim Response to Quran Burning

by Tawfik Hamid

Wall Street Journal
September 11, 2010

It's unclear whether or not the Rev. Terry Jones will go ahead with his highly publicized Quran burning this evening in Florida. But Muslims can play a major role in preventing a violent response to any burnings of their holy book.

Islamic scholars can emphasize that the Quran clearly teaches that no one can be punished on account of the actions of others (surra 6, verse 164). In other words, it is against the value system of the Quran to punish Americans or Christians because of the acts of a small minority.

In addition, leading Islamic authorities should issue a powerful fatwa against those who might respond to Quran burning with violence against non-Muslims. The fatwa must clearly state that those who react by carrying out violent acts against non-Muslims are apostates. It should also say that those who attack non-Muslims to seek revenge will not be buried with Muslims and will go to hell forever.

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Obama Tries to Calm Religious Tensions

New York Times
September 10, 2010

President Obama gave an impassioned call on Friday for tolerance and better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims at home and abroad, defending the “inalienable rights” of those who worship Islam to practice their religion freely.

Mr. Obama made his statements as protests and violence continued in Afghanistan, set off by a Florida pastor’s plans, now suspended, to burn Korans on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and against the backdrop of the controversy in New York over a proposed Islamic center near ground zero.

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Tom Toles (Sep. 10, 2010)

The Ongoing Controversy Over the Planned Mosque Near Ground Zero: How It Reveals Important Fault Lines in Americans' Thinking About Religion

by Marci A. Hamilton

FindLaw
September 10, 2010

The public debate over whether a planned Islamic center, which will include a mosque, should be located two blocks from Ground Zero has revealed several critical fault lines in Americans' thinking about religion -- as this column will explain.

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In Virginia, a Woman on the Verge of Execution

Time
September 10, 2010

After midnight on Oct. 30, 2002, two men crept into an unlocked trailer in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. A family of three was sleeping. Toting shotguns, the intruders roused Teresa Lewis, now 40, and told her to leave the bedroom she shared with her husband Julian. One of the men shot Julian several times. The other intruder stalked down the hall and put five bullets into Julian's son, C.J., a U.S. Army reservist. The intruders divvied up the cash in Julian's wallet and fled the trailer. About 45 minutes later, Teresa Lewis called the police to report that her husband and stepson had been killed. But when the police arrived, Julian Lewis was still alive. Among his last words was an ominous accusation: "My wife knows who done this to me."

She did. As detailed in court documents, Teresa Lewis had paid the shooters — Matthew Shallenberger, 22, and Rodney Fuller, 19 — to kill her husband and stepson. Some murders are spurred by sex and others by money; in this one it was both. After meeting the pair at a local Walmart, Lewis started an affair with Shallenberger. In return for killing Julian and C.J. Lewis, Teresa promised to split her stepson's $250,000 life-insurance policy with the two men, and she fronted $1,200 in cash to buy the guns and ammunition with which her family would be executed. In May 2003, after waiving her right to a trial, Lewis pleaded guilty to seven offenses, including two counts of murder for hire. A judge, deeming Lewis the crime's mastermind — "the head of this serpent," as he put it — sentenced her to death by lethal injection. The triggermen, who also pleaded guilty, were given life sentences.

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Quranamok

by William Saletan

Slate
September 10, 2010

So let me get this straight: A Florida minister who has fewer than 50 followers, doesn't answer to any Christian organization, and doesn't even know the other pastors in his town set off panic and violence around the world by holding hostage a few copies of the Quran. He withstood pleas from the National Association of Evangelicals, the World Evangelical Alliance, the U.S. secretary of state, and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Then, in negotiations with an imam from Orlando, he agreed to surrender his hostages in exchange for what he thought was a deal to relocate a Manhattan mosque from its planned site near Ground Zero. But the imam in Manhattan said he had made no such deal and hadn't even talked to the imam from Orlando. So now the minister says he was double-crossed and might burn his hostages after all.

Someday, perhaps after a few more Qurans, American flags, effigies, cars, and embassies have been torched, all of this will be sorted out. But for now, let's be clear about one thing this crazy episode has proved: Nobody in it controls anybody else.

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Obama denounces planned Koran burning, renews call for religious tolerance

Washington Post
September 10, 2010

President Obama on Friday described religious tolerance as "that thing that is best in us," renewing his call for improved relations with the Muslim world a day after the pastor of a small Florida church suspended plans to burn copies of the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Meantime, the imam behind a proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero said no meeting is planned with the Florida pastor behind the Koran event.

"I am prepared to consider meeting with anyone who is seriously committed to pursuing peace. We have no such meeting planned at this time. Our plans for the community center have not changed. With the solemn day of September 11 upon us, I encourage everyone to take time for prayer and reflection," Feisal Abdul Rauf said in a statement issued by his publicist.

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Nine years after 9/11: Ugly anti-Muslim tide fouls U.S. shores

USA Today
September 10, 2010

Few would have been surprised if Americans had lashed out angrily at Muslims immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Instead, the nastiness was confined to scattered incidents as President Bush and others corked a potential geyser of hate with messages of reason.

As the ninth anniversary of the attacks arrives, reason seems in shorter supply, threatened by controversies over plans to burn Qurans or build a mosque near Ground Zero.

In another time, neither would have drawn much national attention.

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Ban on Stem-Cell Funds Lifted for Now

Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2010

A federal appellate panel on Thursday temporarily lifted a lower court's ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, another twist in a battle with high stakes for science and the Obama administration.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered a stay of the ban issued Aug. 23 by U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth. A three-judge panel on the appeals court said it wanted "sufficient opportunity" to consider whether a ban is justified and said the temporary move shouldn't be viewed as a ruling on the merits of the underlying case.

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Appeals court gets embryonic stem cell issue

Washington Post
September 10, 2010

Last month, Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an injunction barring the federal government from funding research on embryonic stem cells. The judge cited the Dickey-Wicker amendment, which puts off-limits federal dollars for work "in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under" applicable federal regulations. The National Institutes of Health suspended funding for new embryonic stem cell projects and put in doubt the funding for those already underway.

On Thursday the D.C. federal appeals court lifted Judge Lamberth's order, allowing the government to fund embryonic stem cell research -- for now. The court, which made clear that its decision is preliminary until it has a chance to review the case thoroughly, should make the ruling permanent.

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Merkel's Stand for Freedom

Wall Street Journal
September 10, 2010

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's speech Wednesday at a ceremony honoring Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has led to some breathless media coverage: for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung it was her "most explosive appointment" while the Bild called it "most courageous." The fact that both may well be right underlines just how controversial it has become to defend Western values in the face of Islamist extremism.

The 75-year-old Mr. Westergaard has been living under police protection for the past five years for drawing Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban in one of the 12 cartoons the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published in 2005. The illustrations triggered riots around the world that caused at least 50 deaths while the paper and the Danish government came under pressure from Muslim countries to retract the cartoons.

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Turkey's too important to dismiss its referendum as a rowdy squabble

by Simon Tisdall

Guardian
September 9, 2010

Proposed reforms to Turkey's constitution, the subject of a national referendum on Sunday, appear largely unexceptional to western eyes. But after months of impassioned, increasingly polarised campaigning, the vote has effectively transformed into a plebiscite on the eight-year rule of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his neo-Islamist AK party. The outcome has potentially dramatic implications for Turkey's future regional and international role.

A string of amendments intended to strengthen individuals, trade union and privacy rights are mostly uncontroversial. So, too, is a proposal to try military personnel accused of crimes against the state in civilian courts – although the army doubtless views it as another assault on its autonomy. It is Erdoğan's plan to change the way judges and prosecutors are appointed that has got the opposition up in arms.

They say the proposal is part of the AKP's "creeping coup" against the secular state bequeathed by Turkey's founding father, Kemal Ataturk. By attempting to increase executive control over the judiciary, as he as already done over the military, Erdoğan is accused of dangerous "Putinist" authoritarianism, of pursuing a covert Islamist agenda, and of seeking to create an all-powerful presidency that he himself will one day occupy.

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High court won't order state to defend Prop. 8

San Francisco Chronicle
September 9, 2010

The state Supreme Court refused to come to the aid of California's embattled ban on same-sex marriage Wednesday, denying a conservative group's request to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal a federal judge's ruling striking down the voter-approved measure.

The state officials' decision not to argue in support of Proposition 8 has raised questions about whether anyone is legally qualified to defend it in court. The Pacific Justice Institute filed suit last week, arguing that the California Constitution requires Brown to defend the state's laws.

A state appeals court dismissed the suit without a hearing, and the state's high court denied review Wednesday without comment.


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Europe’s most persecuted people?

by Ben Judah

Prospect
September 9, 2010

President Sarkozy’s controversial roundup and deportation of thousands of gypsies currently living in France has been condemned by many quarters—the Pope, the president of the EU Commission and a UN committee. The Roma in question are EU citizens who had every right to move to France, but not to stay indefinitely without a job. Yet despite the high-level criticism of Sarkozy’s move, his policy signals a gathering tempo of persecution of the Roma people in Europe. Last week seven Roma were killed by a gunman in Slovakia, before he turned the weapon on himself. Eight similar killings have taken place in neighbouring Hungary over the past 18 months, and 30 firebombing attacks have been reported. In Rome, the mayor has begun demolishing shanties in effort to push the migrants out of the city. In both Serbia and Kosovo there have been ethnic stabbings of large numbers of Roma, who were driven out by Albanians after 1999 and are not welcome to return. Closer to home, Roma have been driven out of Northern Ireland in racist attacks. These developments should worry us all. As history has shown, the widespread maltreatment of a large, stateless minority can have devastating consequences.

Experts believe that there may be up to 11m Roma people in Europe today, making their population greater than Austria’s or Sweden’s. While fertility rates are dropping to record lows in the new EU member states, Roma numbers are exploding. If the numbers hold, 20 per cent of Hungarians and 40 per cent of the country’s workforce will be Roma in 2050—compared to just 6 per cent in 2006. In the coming decades, the danger is that a large proportion of the EU’s population could effectively end up being deemed second-class citizens.

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Fears for Turkey's Future Roil Vote on Constitution

Wall Street Journal
September 9, 2010

Sunday's vote to amend Turkey's constitution is shaping up as a referendum on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Eight years after Mr. Erdogan and his Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party came to power, the debate over what this nation's devoutly religious, tough talking and charismatic leader believes—and where he really wants to take Turkey—is as acute as ever.

When he entered politics in the 1970s, Mr. Erdogan was by most definitions a political Islamist. As recently as the early 1990s, for example, he said in speeches and interviews that it wasn't possible to be both secular and Muslim; that democracy was a tool rather than a goal; that he was a "shariah-ist"; and that Turkey should stay out of the European Union.

Mr. Erdogan, however, underwent a dramatic conversion to liberal democracy, emerging to form a new political party, known as AKP, whose platform was secular and which in 2005 launched negotiations for Turkey to join the EU.

Now, he is asking Turks to approve a slate of changes to the nation's constitution that would improve civil liberties and could also enable the government to reshape the country's top judiciary—currently a bastion of secularist opposition to Mr. Erdogan and his party.

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Illegal immigration: What's the real cost to taxpayers?

by Edward Schumacher-Matos

Washington Post
September 9, 2010

In 1909, at the height of the last great immigration wave, when immigrants reached a peak of almost 15 percent of the U.S. population, they made up about half of all public welfare recipients.

They were two-thirds of welfare recipients in Chicago.

In the country's 30 largest cities, meanwhile, more than half of all public school students were the children of immigrants. They were three-fourths in New York.

This history is forgotten in the angry debate over the cost to taxpayers of unauthorized immigrants and their children today. My recent column reporting that unauthorized immigrants were making unexpectedly large contributions to Social Security, for example, led to denunciations that I was being misleading by not looking at the total fiscal picture.

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'Don't ask, don't tell' policy ruled unconstitutional

CNN
September 10, 2010

A federal court in Riverside, California, ruled Thursday that the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- which bars gay men and lesbians from serving openly -- is unconstitutional.

"Plaintiff has demonstrated it is entitled to the relief sought on behalf of its members, a judicial declaration that the don't ask, don't tell act violates the Fifth and First Amendments, and a permanent injunction barring its enforcement," concluded U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips, a 1999 Clinton appointee.

The 85-page ruling came in a case filed by the group Log Cabin Republicans against the government and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates.

"The act discriminates based on the content of the speech being regulated," Phillips wrote. "It distinguishes between speech regarding sexual orientation, and inevitably, family relationships and daily activities, by and about gay and lesbian servicemembers, which is banned, and speech on those subjects by and about heterosexual servicemembers, which is permitted."

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Pentagon Plan: Buying Books to Keep Secrets

New York Times
September 9, 2010

Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

The publication of Operation Dark Heart, by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.

Disputes between the government and former intelligence officials over whether their books reveal too much have become commonplace. But veterans of the publishing industry and intelligence agencies could not recall another case in which an agency sought to dispose of a book that had already been printed.

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A power struggle in Iran: The president's awkward friend

Economist
September 9, 2010

In the summer of 2009 Iran’s divided conservatives came together to save the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after his disputed re-election provoked huge street protests by the reformist Green Movement. To have lost Mr Ahmadinejad to a liberal “plot” would, they judged, have imperilled the Islamic Republic which succours them all.

All the same, many conservatives are far from enamoured of Iran’s president. Challenging him, however, is turning out to be a different matter. Barely a year into his second and constitutionally final term, his future is again the object of dark speculation, only this time by people who once professed to be his friends. His immediate entourage, in particular, is being castigated and none more so than the man whom, it is thought, Mr Ahmadinejad would like to succeed him: his old friend and relation by marriage, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai.

As the president’s closest adviser, the slim, handsome, self-confident Mr Mashai has come to represent all that traditionalists in Shia Iran find odious about Mr Ahmadinejad’s presidency. The Islamic Republic was founded on the idea that the Muslim community awaits the reappearance of the hidden “12th imam”, a messianic leader who was “occulted”—hidden by God—in the ninth century; in the meantime it is up to the clergy to run human affairs, under an arrangement known as the Guardianship of the Jurist. Mr Mashai, it is strongly rumoured, believes himself to have a direct link to the hidden imam, and hence regards the intercession of Iran’s clergy as superfluous. He is also said to have encouraged the president’s well-known millenarian tendencies.

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Judge Rules That Military Policy Violates Rights of Gays

New York Times
September 9, 2010

The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gay members of the military is unconstitutional, a federal judge in California ruled Thursday.

Judge Virginia A. Phillips of Federal District Court struck down the rule in an opinion issued late in the day. The policy was signed into law in 1993 as a compromise that would allow gay and lesbian soldiers to serve in the military.

The rule limits the military’s ability to ask about the sexual orientation of service members, and allows homosexuals to serve, as long as they do not disclose their orientation and do not engage in homosexual acts.

The plaintiffs challenged the law under the Fifth and First Amendments to the Constitution, and Judge Phillips agreed.

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Read the decision

Muslims in New York Still Feel Vulnerable

Wall Street Journal
September 9, 2010

New York-based Muslims shopping on the eve of the holiday of Eid al-Fitr said that despite a Florida pastor's move to drop plans to burn the Quran, that and other controversies still left them feeling dismayed and vulnerable.

Hamed Hamed, a 52-year-old Egyptian-American who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, said the controversy over the Quran burning had saddened him and his family.

"We came to America because we live a free life. This is what we love about this country, but now someone is always attacking Muslims. We are tired," said Mr. Hamed, who owns a shop called Fertile Crescent in Brooklyn.

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