With anti-Muslim sentiment joining anti-Mexican immigrant bias and undisguised racism against the first black President, the American dream of assimilation seems to be falling apart. Why is all this happening now when an even worse Depression and a wider war in the past century brought the country together, leading to the breakdown of discriminatory barriers in the decades that followed? Blame it on Tea Party...

Are political clerics destroying the image of Islam? According to columnist Saad Al-Ramla of Iraq’s Sotal Iraq newspaper, clerics with outdated interpretations of Islam should keep out of politics and the law, because they are ruining the lives of ordinary Muslims trying to live in the modern world. Directing his invective toward today’s politically-active imams, columnist Saad Al-Ramla writes in...

Yes, and the actual term is kidnapped children, not ‘child soldiers’… it’s kidnapped children forced by gunpoint from their families and forced to serve evil or else die if they try to run away. Hanging, and skinning the children who try to flee, burning them and hanging their remains to terrify human beings, is the favored act. It’s everywhere, Taliban, Somalia, Kenya, anywhere...

Is growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States, highlighted by Quran-burning Paster Terry Jones, evidence that we are quickly headed toward World War III? According to columnist Yevgeniy Shestakov of Russia’s Rossiyskaya Gazeta, ‘American dogmatism’ will mitigate against compromise with Muslims over issues like First Amendment rights, and may well lead to the fulfillment of Fidel Castro’s...

In today’s Slatest. The top story: AP: “US poverty on track to post record gain in 2009.” The bottom story: Wall Street Journal: “At This Hotel, Even a Pooch Can Live in the Lap of Luxury.”

The devaluing of human life — and of childhood — is continuing in the 21st century. And one sign is a disturbing USA Today report that says the Taliban are increasing using children in many ways to fight Americans: From 3- and 4-year-olds used as human shields or to gather spent cartridges, to teenagers offered motorcycles for planting roadside bombs, children are being used more and more to fight...

Is Al Qaeda getting stronger or weakening.CNN’s Anderson Cooper , Fareed Zakaria and Peter Bergen look at this issue:

The numbers are interesting. What could be behind it? Some thoughts HERE.

This past week we saw a bewildered, confused Pastor Terry Jones of an obscure Gainesville, Fla., church back down after gaining international hysteria he would lead his flock in burning the Qur’an. Today, Sept. 12, nine years and one day after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the twin towers and Pentagon, Pastor Jones’ 15 minutes of fame mercifully is over. Time will tell whether the blowback will continue...

South Africa’s Star newspaper reports that Muslims in in the city of Johannesburg went to court to prevent an angry Muslim businessman from setting Bibles on fire in retaliation for the anticipated burning of Qurans by Pastor Terry Jones. According to the account, evidence presented by the Islamic ‘Scholars of the Truth’ persuaded the angry Muslim defendant that the Quran includes the Gospel,...

In a couple of gripping pieces about the horror and continuing grief experienced by 9/11 survivors and about the recent “blather on television by various women and men about keeping the ’sanctity’ of the 9-11 bomb site,” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, referring to all the “trout-pout commentators [who] hog the discourse” on that issue, says: Those directly affected by 9-11 who themselves escaped or/and...

The “physical rebirth” of the World Trade Center, says a New York Times editorial, “is cause for celebration on this anniversary. It is a far more fitting way to defy the hate-filled extremists who attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and to honor their victims, than to wallow in the intolerance and fear that have mushroomed across the nation.” When the planes hit the Twin Towers...

9/11: The Rest Should Be Silence by Michael Winship This past Sunday was beautiful, bright and warm, not unlike the sky blue day when those two airliners hit the World Trade Center in 2001, just a mile or so from where I live. That day, a Tuesday, was a bit hotter, a bit more humid, yet just as sunny and promising. But this Sunday morning’s silence was broken by the sound of a bell and a small, organized crowd...

I cannot speak for 9-11 survivors for I am not one. I am only a walker. A person who walks with people on the way back from hell. I can only give you my understanding of those whose staggering gait I know deeply. I’ve been a post-trauma specialist and psychoanalyst for forty years. I’ve worked with 9-11 survivor families, individuals and first responders from New York and New Jersey who survived...

I cannot speak for 9-11 survivors for I am not one, but I can give you some windows to look through that most have never seen… Recently, there was much blather on television by various women and men about keeping the ‘sanctity’ of the 9-11 bomb site where so many souls were killed by nineteen murderers. Keeping the sanctity? There’s a reason that all these trout-pout commentators hog...

The new media narrative (which has been gathering speed and force in the last week) is that this pastor-who-isn’t-really-a-pastor of a tiny Florida church who gained enormous notoriety in the media over his stated plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (tomorrow) should have been ignored — that no one knew who he was or had ever heard of his church before the press...

It’s also about lives. This happened in San Bruno, California, but ancient, poorly maintained infrastructure is a problem all over the United States.

It seems Moderates are going the way of the Amish. We may still exist, but the culture has left us behind. Or at least the “new media” has pushed our political horse drawn carriages aside. Instead, this is and shall ever be the age of extremists! Let the moderates dwell in button wearing, barn raising community, while the radicals inherit the earth. You might say these conclusions are extreme. And...

At 12:56 this morning Cal Brown died in Walla Walla, Washington. He was 52 and had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. It isn’t remarkable that he is dead, nor is it remarkable that his was the first execution in the state of Washington since 2001. It isn’t even remarkable that his insanity defense was rejected despite his diagnosis, nor that the U. S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals...

I have often lamented the dearth of Medals of Honor awarded to our heroes of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including the fact that none of the very few Medals of Honor for heroism in those wars has been awarded to a living hero. Well, that is about to change. The Washington Post has just reported that President Obama will be awarding the Medal of Honor to a living soldier. The soldier is Army Spec. Salvatore...

ACT GREAT by the Persian poet Muhammad Hafez What is the key To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering? What is the ‘secret’ secret To slay the crazed one whom each of us Did wed And who can ruin Our heart’s and eye’s exquisitely tender Landscape? Hafez has found Two emerald words that Restored Me That I now cling to these two words as I would cling to the sacred tresses of my Beloved’s...

Breaking News: Various media sources are reporting that a federal judge in Southern California has declared the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips today granted a request for an injunction halting the government’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military. The judge says that the policy...

There is a mentally unbalanced Protestant Preacher and his congregation of some 50 people in Florida who have gleefully, malignantly and insultingly announced their intention to burn Qurans this Saturday, 9/11/10. They plan to exercise their First Amendment Rights within the relatively safe and tolerant bastion of the United States – a country that has a long history of protecting and balancing private religious...

To worldwide relief, Pastor Terry Jones has called off his plans to burn Qurans on September 11. But how is it that a man as misguided and unimportant as this can so easily get the planet’s attention? According to columnist Clovis Rossi of Brazil’s Folha, TV broadcasters are only too willing to cover a ‘show’ that warrants no one’s serious attention. For Folha, Clovis Rossi writes...

For nine years we have been remembering, commemorating, reflecting upon the tragic events that took away more than 3,000 Americans, that took away our innocence, that changed our nation on a sunny Tuesday morning. This Saturday, we will still solemnly remember and shed many tears. We always will. However, one thing will be missing, and it has been missing for several years… What is sadly missing is the unity...