The Latest(ish)
The restaurant, unpretentious and vaguely chic, and the weather, cold and rainy, were as they should have been in northerly, elegant Copenhagen. The watchful plainclothes policemen were not. These are strange, unsettling times in Denmark: quiet, orderly, peaceful, nothing-happens-here Denmark; hated, reviled, infidel, embassies-in-flames Denmark. I was having lunch with Naser Khader, a Syria-born member of the Danish parliament for the Social Liberals (the party of Denmark’s metropolitan elite), a brave, engaging man who has discovered that, in today’s Denmark, for a Muslim to speak his mind about Islamic extremism means immense popularity — he’s probably the country’s most acclaimed [...]
Democratic Muslims: Denmark’s Naser Khader and his band
May 22, 2006
I can’t imagine it’s much fun being a passenger stuck on a cruise liner that has just flipped upside down, but, according to Wolfgang Petersen, the director of “Poseidon,” the sense of confinement makes it even worse. “This is not something a person can run away from. Trapped within a closed environment where there is no escape, no help, and very little time, they are forced to deal with it by themselves.” Trust me, Wolfgang, any audience unfortunate or unwise enough to be trapped in a cinema watching this movie will know exactly how those passengers might feel. Well, perhaps [...]
Bottoms Up on the Poseidon
May 12, 2006
Poseidon; published originally in The New York Sun
There’s a bright, shining, merciful moment, right towards the end of this infuriating, odd, but occasionally perceptive polemic, when its author, Claire Berlinski, says what needs saying about the rancid and rabid anti-Americanism now disgracing Europe’s public discourse: “[It] is a cultist system of faith, rather than a set of rational beliefs, and as such is impervious to revision upon confrontation with facts, logic, evidence, gestures of good will, public relations campaigns, or attempts on the part of the American secretary of state to be a better, more sensitive listener.” Accurate enough, but her observation that there is nothing Americans [...]
Euro Scare?
May 8, 2006
Menace in Europe:Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s, Too, by Claire Berlinski; published originally in National Review