Don't Kill Zacarias Moussaoui.

Zacarias Moussaoui should be spared the death penalty. That's not a cry for mercy, it's a cry for justice. Justice dictates that he not get the martyrdom he craves. Justice dictates that he die old, sick,alone, and forgotten in the deepest hole in a federal prison somewhere in Montana or Idaho and then be buried, unmourned and unremarked in the same place. Let his name be erased. Let him go as a prisoner, a coward and a fool, as a fading symbol of the utter insignificance to civilisation of him and all his kind.

Your papers, please.

This needs the widest possible distribution. Tim Blair also a link.

University of Canterbury Staff: Good Riddance?

After all the pissing and moaning about academic freedom and the sacred arts, UC has laid off 8, count 'em 8, staff at the College of Arts. Frankly if they shut down the whole "Department" of American Studies, it would be no loss at all. Don't believe me? Take a look at the American Studies curriculum. Yep, I don't know how scholarship will endure without The Animal in Popular American Culture or Gender Busting and Other Radical Acts. How about all those panting to take "Hip Hop Culture"?

My personal favorite is The Body in American Culture where, I kid you not, Dr. Vernon Andrews will

marshal a variety of theoretical perspectives - race and ethnicity, feminism and queer theory, cultural studies and poststructuralism - in order to understand the importance of sport in society. It moves outside "traditional" academic texts and knowledges, employing sport biographies, movies, newsclips, sports pages and magazines to forge an understanding of contemporary issues on race and gender in America.

Oh yeah, sign me up for that.

Anybody see any history courses, you know, the ones that tell you what happened, when and why. Economics? Sorry, too many numbers. How about some study of US foreign policy or politics that goes beyond Bush hatred? No that would actually require someone to move beyond the cheap anti-Americanism that passes for political opinion around here.

Movies We'd Like to See

NRO writer James Robbins has a few movies we'd like to see those courageous folks in Hollywood make.

My personal favorite:
Ambush at Gush Katif: This film would dramatize the 2004 roadside attack in Gaza on a car driven by Israeli social worker and expectant mother Tali Hatuel. Two Palestinian gunmen rushed the vehicle and discovered that the driver was a pregnant woman — whereupon they pumped bullets into her stomach and face . . . and then pumped bullets into the face of her 11-year-old daughter . . . and into the face of her nine-year-old daughter . . . and into the face of her seven-year-old daughter . . . and into the face of her two-year-old daughter. The attackers were eventually shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. The next day, two Palestinian organizations, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committee, both claimed credit for the attack, and the official Voice of Palestine Radio called it a “heroic operation.” As an epilogue, the film would segue to the funeral for Hatuel and her daughters — which was interrupted when two more Palestinian gunmen, disguised as women, made it to the perimeter of the cemetery and opened fire on the mourners, including women and young children, who were sent scrambling behind parked cars and concrete barriers. Both gunmen were again shot dead by Israeli soldiers on hand to protect the crowd . . . and Islamic Jihad again claimed credit for the incident.

And another thing....

As some of my dissembling commentators know perfectly well, I'm not in the least concerned with private behaivior. To clarify for the morally clueless: Are you, personally, prepared to give up drinking alcohol; if a woman, to cover yourself from neck to ankle in public; if gay, to go WAY back in the closet; or, if unmarried, to give up public displays of affection? Well, are you? And those are just the things that offend moderate Muslims.

Why is it that people who have insisted on making a human rights issue out of the public display and public acceptance of their lifestyle at all times and in all places regardless of the offense caused are suddenly so reticent when it comes to Islamist sensibilities? Just a coincidence, I'm sure.