Tomorrow marks the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 people and shocked the world. Even during the politically charged years of the Bush war presidency, September 11 remained a solemn, apolitical occasion, but this year for the first time the anniversary will be politicized and tinged with American anxiety about Muslims. Angry demonstrations are planned at the site of the so-called Ground Zero mosque, and a pastor is reserving the right to make a bonfire of Qur’ans in Florida.

“The biggest argument in America this summer has been over the Ground Zero mosque that isn’t at Ground Zero, and isn’t a mosque,” writes Sun Media’s L. Ian MacDonald, pointing out that what’s actually being proposed is a Muslim community centre a full two blocks from Ground Zero. Despairing also at pastor Terry Jones's plans to incinerate the Muslim holy book, says “intelligence, judgment, discernment and taste all seem to have gone missing in America.”

Even Daniel Pipes, a hardline pro-Israel conservative who’s spent years raising the alarm about Islamists, is unsettled by the current discourse. “The energetic push-back of recent months finds me partially elated,” he writes in the National Post, “Those who reject Islamism and all its works now constitute a majority and are on the march.” But he’s wary of the “increasing anti-Islamic tone” of the anti-terror movement. “Muslims alone can offer an antidote to Islamism” asserts Pipes. “As I often note, radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution.”

“There’s no shortage of priests, politicians and pundits spouting hate against Muslims,” writes the Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui. But the Ground Zero mosque and Qur’an burning plot “have helped awaken Americans to the alarming degree of ‘anti-Muslim frenzy’” and while this is disturbing, it's prompted mainstream voices to spread the word “that Islamophobia, just like anti-Semitism or anti-Catholicism, erodes the foundations of a secular democracy.”

As the New York Times reflects back on the attacks this week, it ran this collection of graffiti murals that appeared in the country’s poorest neighbourhoods after 9/11. In nine years, they’ve rarely been defaced.

Rumour has it that Stephen Harper is getting ready to shell out up to $180 million dollars for a hockey arena in Québec City to lure back the NHL’s beloved Nordiques. Now, he hasn’t actually committed the money yet, but that hasn’t stopped the nation’s pundits (none of whom are big hockey fans apparently) from warning him that this is a very, very bad idea.

The optics are very bad for a government looking “to rein in the deficit, and philosophically resistant to federal intrusions into areas best left to other levels of government, or the private sector,” says a Globe and Mail editorial. Given that Regina, Edmonton, and Hamilton have all been refused federal money for new sports facilities, “(w)hatever the gains in Quebec, the Conservative government would pay dearly for ignoring these cities.”

Harper has left the door wide open for Michael Ignatieff to crush him in the next election, according to Kelly McParland in the National Post. The “Tory base has finally reached the limits of its willingness to hold its nose and compromise” after “Ottawa poured money into central Toronto” for the G20 summits, and followed it up with “excessive spending on signs to ensure every single penny spent on stimulus is matched by a penny spent glorifying the government for spending it.”

Building an arena before the NHL has committed to brining a team to Québec is folly, says the Post’s Scott Stinson. “‘Build a stadium and they will come’ is just not how these things work,” he writes, and cities with expensive facilities are “flirted with like drunk teens on prom night” by the NHL, which pits aspiring expansion cities against each other to win concessions.

The “Conservatives have manoeuvred themselves into a lose-lose position,” says Chantal Hébert in the Toronto Star, because is Québec so hockey-crazy that if he balks at funding the arena now “he will almost certainly lose some or all of his five Quebec-area seats in the next election.” And if he does fund it, the formerly fiscally responsible prime minster “will be financing a monument to his conversion to pork-barrel politics.”

Whenever guests come to dinner, families put their squabbles on hold. Such was the case this week when U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi came to Ottawa to meet with Canadians on both sides of the oil sands debate, including Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach and environmental groups. Everybody made nice and both sides left saying they were optimistic they’d gotten their points across.

Rick Smith and Marlo Raynolds, of Environmental Defence and the Pembina Institute respectively, give us an inside scoop on their Pelosi parlay in the Ottawa Citizen. “Pelosi asked what we wanted to see happen,” they write, “We explained the best thing for our countries and the security of our children is to ultimately chart a course off the oil sands.” Pointing to a lack of regulation, runaway greenhouse gas emissions, and health concerns from the local population, the pair said “The best strategy in the short term is to stop building new oilsands projects. The U.S. can contribute by shelving (the) Keystone XL pipeline,” a massive project to build a conduit from Alberta to Texas.

“We shouldn’t have to rely on … a visiting American VIP” to find occasion to put away the knives and have a “serious national debate” on the oil sands, laments a Toronto Star editorial. As a result of both sides' "public relations wars, propaganda campaigns and showpieces," Canadians are still so divided on Alberta’s energy project that we “can’t even agree on what to call it. Tar sands, say environmentalists. Oilsands, insists the industry, which doesn’t want to be tarred by the traditional term.” Pelosi’s visit could be a starting point for better dialogue.

Although Stelmach quipped “Boy, after today, I’m excited” after his meeting with Pelosi, the National Post’s Don Martin says her visit was probably “more about gathering input for a future trash-talking of the Alberta and Saskatchewan oil sands than a unbiased hearing of the facts.” Voters in her California district are strongly against oil sands imports, and with Democrats about to plunge over an electoral cliff in the Novmember midterms, for her to “come out in favour of the oil sands now would be political suicide.”