“Your Terrorists are Our Heroes,” say the Islamic Thinkers Society in Queens. See the fine NYObserver story on the case of Kristine Withers, the conservative lesbian after a little set-to with local Islamists.

Also from Queens. Yesterday, Hanna Rosin had a nice essay in the Washington Post about growing up in a poor immigrant family in Briarwood. She also had a teriffic piece in the New Yorker recently on Patrick Henry College in Virginia, which specializes in educating home-schoolers and sending them off to Washington D.C.

The city of Berlin has succeeded in dismantling the Checkpoint Charlie memorial, which included crosses honoring those East Germans who tried to escape and paid with their lives. A few of those persecuted by the GDR protested the destruction of the memorial but were forcibly removed. As always, Davids Medienkritik has much to say on this as well as photos of the travesty.

is that The Inside is on the way out.

The good news is that Tim Minear looks on the bright side:

When I spoke to one my cast members about this, he offered that I must “be crushed.” I’m not. This is pretty much what I expected, which doesn’t mean I didn’t pour every bit of energy, time and care I had into 13 episodes for the last year. I never consider it a waste of time. Or a waste of, well, their money. DVDs have changed a lot. If I end up being some little Americanized BBC, churning out limited series for DVD, and the people who employ me want to keep handing over 20 or 30 million dollars for me to do that, then I’ll be perfectly content. There’s something nice about being able to go from a hard drinking space western to a hard drinking whimsical comedy to a hard drinking abyss peering noir.

Update, 4:11 p.m.: Erasmus puts it well: “Fox continues its self-designated rôle as the network most willing to put on interesting, unusual series and then yank them far too quickly.”

The Brussels Journal is a new, and incredibly useful, blog about Europe run by, among others, my friend Paul Belien. Must reading.

I finally purchased the July issue of GQ (yes, the one with Jessica Simpson on the cover), featuring Lisa DePaulo’s mesmerizing interview with the Pennsylvania National Guardsmen who supervised Saddam Hussein. Specialist Sean O’Shea summed it up best when he wrote in his diary, “Part of me wanted to punch him in the face. Another part wanted to know what was going on in his head.” And while the former didn’t happen, O’Shea and his fellow soldiers learned more than they ever imagined from this bloodthirsty, megalomaniacal dictator.

Some highlights:

“Never Froot Loops. Saddam loved Raisin Bran Crunch, but sometimes they’d run out. It was one of the few times Sean ever saw him defeated–when he’d bring him the wrong cereal. ‘No Froot Loops!’ Saddam would say.”

“And his favorite food was … Cheetos. He was nuts about Cheetos. One of the guardsmen turned him on to them, and before long he would get grumpy if they ran out…. Then one day they gave him Doritos instead, and Saddam never went back…. He’d eat a family-size bag of Doritos in ten minutes…. When they’d give him a bag, he’d smile, thank them profusely, and retreat to a corner of his cell. Then he’d sprinkle a few drops of water into the bag and eat.”

“His English kept improving, and he liked to tell jokes. There was one about a sheep and three men. ‘You couldn’t always understand him,’ says [Specialist] Jesse [Dawson], ‘but he was laughing, so you’d start laughing, too.”

“When Sean told him that Reagan had recently died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, Saddam got quiet for a minute, then said, ‘Yes, this happens.'”

Saddam has been working on his memoirs as well as his poetry. But when he translated it from Arabic into English, it didn’t always make sense. Said Corporal Jonathan Reese, “It would be like, ‘There’s a blender in the street.’ And we’d be like, ‘Beautiful!'”

But perhaps the most disturbing detail, which seems to go against Saddam’s germaphobic tendencies, is that he apparently doesn’t use toilet paper: “He wiped with his left hand and had a hose next to the toilet that he used to wash himself off.”

Being in Saddam’s presence–even as the men reminded themselves constantly of what he did to his people–it became hard to avoid a conversation with him. (Hermann Göring was supposedly the same way in prison.) According to the soldiers, Saddam still believes he is president of Iraq and is waiting to return to his palace. He’s in for a rude awakening.

As I ate my sandwich of pastrami, cole slaw, and Russian dressing on a sub roll with a side of Cheetos and a Diet Coke, I read the Washington Post story about John Keitz, the 39-year-old man from Dundalk, Maryland, who has been bed-ridden for about seven years. Keitz weighs 625 pounds.

The profile, by David Montgomery, is, well, engrossing. Keitz had always been a big guy, weighing 100 pounds even in first grade and 250 pounds at age 18. (He believes his morbid obesity stems from a bad metabolism and not simply large portions.) As Montgomery explains it:

He lies on his front, because if he were to lie on his back, rolls of flesh would press on his windpipe and suffocate him. His head never touches sheet or pillow. At night, his left cheek nestles upon a soft white pile of shoulder and breast meat.

The last time Keitz stood, he was in the midst of preparing a mac ‘n’ cheese dinner for himself and his wife Gina. Just as he was slicing the Velveeta, it happened.

Keitz knows what people think: “How could someone get so fat? How could someone allow himself to be bedridden for seven years? How is it someone his size has sex?” (Okay, that last question was mine. And based on a friend’s account of an obese couple she knows well, I do know how it works, the details of which are not suitable for publication under any circumstance.)

The story of John Keitz is a sad one. Yes, he has lost some weight–he once weighed 781 pounds–and he is trying to literally get back on his feet. But he still has a long way to go, and must simultaneously battle diabetes, arthritis, and sleep apnea. Let’s hope David Montgomery does a follow-up next year.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to catch a screening of The Great Raid, about the liberation of a Japanese-controlled POW camp in the Philippines during World War II. (I’ll have a more extensive review of the film when it comes out August 12.) But in the meantime, let me just say this is a movie you should not miss. Based on the books The Great Raid on Cabanatuan and Ghost Soldiers (the latter of which I reviewed), The Great Raid is one of those powerful reminders of human sacrifice and, in particular, the sacrifices made in the Pacific campaign. Americans and Europeans are very much used to films treating the Holocaust such as Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful, but are seemingly not as well acquainted with similar instances in the Far East. The Japanese still have a difficult time coping with atrocities such as in Nanking and the Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

The Great Raid does not flinch in its portrayal of horrific crimes committed by Japanese soldiers against both the innocent and Allied prisoners. In fact, I contemplated walking out after the first three minutes, which showed actual black and white footage of the death march. (Full disclosure: My father, who was just a boy during the war, was almost executed by the Japanese.) But luckily my emotions settled down and became downright numb after experiencing Connie Nielsen’s acting job. There also seems to be a deficiency in character development–most likely because there are too many characters to cover. The music tends toward the overly dramatic and sweeping when silence could’ve been more effective.

On the plus side, James Franco has finally got himself a solid role and Filipino actors are given their due. Credit should also be given to the Japanese actors who no doubt made a courageous decision in accepting the roles of ruthless killers. And who knows if the film will ever be shown in Japan? (Thanks to its distributor, Miramax, the movie should get some good press stateside.) Unlike The Thin Red Line, there are no moral ambiguities here. It is quite clear the occupying power did some really bad things.

The Great Raid will help spread awareness of the valor of Americans and Filipinos alike and, again, remind us of that terrible price of freedom.

In case you’re late in getting to this week’s New Yorker, you’re in for a ride. David Remnci, unsurprisingly, has a brilliant Talk of the Town item on Mike Tyson. And then there’s Anthony Lane.

I’ve been reading Lane’s very excellent book, Nobody’s Perfect and i thought, for a moment, that I had figured him out as a writer, that I was beginning to be able to pick out the seams. Bugger that.

Lane reviews Yes, and insipid looking movie starring Joan Allen.

He reviews it in verse.

By the end, we know what Potter hates:

Bigots, God, and the United States,

And Anglo-Saxon men in suits and ties

Who seem unable to control their flies.

And here’s the hook: I guess it could be worse,

But—brace yourself—the whole damn thing’s in verse.

Rhyming couplets, five-stress lines, the lot:

A Michael Bay production this is not.

“Do make yourself at home. Come; sit by me,

Something to drink? Perhaps you’d like some tea.”

You may get off on this enthralling stuff,

But after half an hour I’d had enough.

I have a secret hunch that Potter knows

Her tale is skimpy; that is why she goes

For multiple dissolves, CCTV,

And endless slo-mo: all the devilry

That smart directors use to fill the time—

Think George Lucas, minus droids, plus rhyme.

Whenever you feel the urge to make fun of Tina Brown, count ten. And remember she’s the one who plucked Lane out of obscurity for the New Yorker.