Six items

Common thread - something to do with totalitarianism, those who resist it, and those who accomodate to it.

1. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, ex-Muslim, head to head with a stupid Jewish liberal
Al-Jazeera's newest (Jewish) star: Kathy Shaidle on Avi Lewis. Fantastic account of Avi Lewis doing a really bad job of interviewing Ayaan Hirsi Ali, biting off a lot more meat than he can chew. Sample:

Lewis asked Hirsi Ali for her "critique against Islam." Ali, the epitome of poised, calmly responded that "Islam means submission to the will of Allah. A doctrine that requires the individual to become a slave is, in my view, is bad."

"But aren't there different kinds of Islam, just as there are different interpretations of Christianity and Judaism?" Lewis asked.

"No," his guest replied.

Here Lewis began to unravel. Hirsi Ali's calm, cool demeanor actually seemed to agitate him as much as her answers. Grinning for some unknown reason, Lewis insisted that "Evangelical Christianity has risen to the highest ranks of power" in the United States. "They shoot abortion doctors in the United States of America! Homophobia is rampant!" The "abortion doctors" trope is a favorite among the bien pensant elites, of course, but mass-murder, in this case, means that seven murders have been committed and, as Hirsi Ali points out in her interview, they have all been prosecuted and punished -- since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

2. We Are Change: Scary wacko cultists
Cedar Lounge Revolution on the WAC-os (plus a little more here)


3. Bernard-Henri Levy nails Jimmy Carter
Brilliant op-ed by BHL in the WSJ. Sample:

"The problem is not that he is, or is not, talking to the Syrians... The problem is also the formidable nose thumbing he got from Hamas's exiled leader, Khaled Mashaal, who, at the very moment he was receiving Mr. Carter, also triggered the first car bombing in several months in Keren Shalom on the Gaza strip – and that this event elicited from poor Mr. Carter, all tangled up in his small-time mediator calculations, not one disapproving or empathetic word."

More Carter from Dean's World. More BHL on Darfur and the Beijing Olympics (via Norm).


4. Voice of the banlieu? French-Jewish-Afro-Brazilian comic art
Forward article on Alexis Peskine - fascinating.


5. Gay Paree
An exhibit of photographs that show the disturbing extent to which Paris (and Parisians) got along just fine during the Nazi occupation.


6. The assassination of Leon Trotsky: The Movie
As Roland says, God bless the internet. Roland adds: "And speaking of Trotsky, a nice article on Christopher Hitchens is up at Prospect Magazine."

Hat tip for some of these: Jogo