In vivid contrast even to last year and especially the year before that, the 9-11 anniversary in New York City was extremely subdued. Neither the Islamophobes nor the "Truthies" nor the sectarian left seem to have exploited the commemoration. By the time this blogger arrived at Ground Zero by bicycle in the late afternoon, the only organized presence on the street was various small clusters of evangelical Christians. (The Jehovah's Witnesses were the most shameless, with a big banner showing the twisted wreckage of a destroyed city under the word "DOOMSDAY.") Mercifully, for the first time this year, there was no speechifying by politicians at the official ceremony in the morning. "Last year it was horrible," one survivor told Newsday. "We don't need them [politicians] here." Significant progress has now actually been made on the new tower, which rises in arrogant ugliness over the site. But maybe, at long last, New York and the United States are catching up with the rest of the planet in moving on from 9-11. Except, of course, that 11 years later, we remain at war in Afghanistan...

The US  Department of Defense announced Aug. 29 that the Chief Prosecutor for Military Commissions has filed terrorism charges against a Saudi Guantánamo Bay prisoner accused of plotting with al-Qaeda to blow up oil tankers near Yemen. The detainee, Ahmed al Darbi, has been accused of six offenses under the Military Commissions Act of 2009, including conspiracy, aiding and abetting attacks on civilians, and aiding and abetting terrorism based on his former work as a weapons instructor, contact with Osama bin Laden, and support of bombing civilian oil tankers. According to the statement released by the Pentagon:

The Aug. 6 massacre of six worshippers at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. is revealing in its reactions from across the spectrum, but let's start with Mitt Romney. The media have noted his embarrassing blooper of confusing the words "Sikh" and "sheikh," but failed to note that the very quote in which he made the gaffe was not merely ignorant but insidiously sinister. Here it is: "We had a moment of silence in honor of the people who lost their lives at that sheik temple. I noted that it was a tragedy for many, many reasons. Among them are the fact that people, the sheik people, are among the most peaceable and loving individuals you can imagine, as is their faith." (AP, Aug. 7) Right, as opposed to those dirty you-know-whos. Numerous commentators (mostly on the left, natch) have pointed out that the emphasis on the fact that Sikhs aren't Muslims sometimes comes close to implying that violent attacks on Muslims would be OK. Romney's subtext is clearly that the Sikhs are good, domesticated wogs that white America can tolerate, while those bad Muslims have got it coming, because their faith is not "peaceable and loving."