A cliché can take the form of a construction as well as the tired words that slot into it. The Spectator's Dot Wordsworth gives us some examples:

Clichés gather on the tide and stick on the shingle of daily life like tarred bladder-wrack. A curious species of cliché sets a stereotyped pattern, into which words may be fitted to taste. A particularly annoying example, because it has pretensions to humour, is exemplified by: ‘The words door, horse and bolted spring to mind.’ Or, in an online discussion of US relations with Venezuela that I have just stumbled across, ‘The words pot, kettle and black spring to mind.’ This is a sort of double cliché, because it incorporates in its unvarying mould some already well-worn proverbial remark. I’d be interested in any information about its origins, but I fear they are irrecoverable.

When I mentioned this tiresome form of humour to my husband he went red around the collar (an indication of thought processes within) and came out with a speech formula that he hated. ‘What part of “push off” don’t you understand?’

This piece of clichéd syntax has at least a short history. An American country singer, Lorrie Morgan, had something of a success in 1992 with an album called Watch Me, featuring a song ‘What part of No’. It is about a woman who repels a man’s romantic advances.

I appreciate the drink and the rose was nice
                                of you.
I don’t mean to be so bleak, I don’t think I’m
                               getting’ through.
I don’t need no company, and I don’t want
                               to dance.

What part of ‘No’ don’t you understand?

There are reports of the phrase appearing in a Californian newspaper called The Mountain Democrat in 1988, but that is hardly the dawn of time. I can only hope that the phrases it spawns enjoy a future life just as short.

I have certainly used "What part of 'No' don't you understand?" and much worse, so motes and beams spring to mind, along with a petard or two of my own hoisting.

What part of "old hat" don't you understand?

What part of "What part of 'No' don't you understand?" don't you understand?

Straight out of Mohammed's very own text book I believe. An exclusive from The Times.
The West is indirectly funding the insurgency in Afghanistan thanks to a system of payoffs to Taleban commanders who charge protection money to allow convoys of military supplies to reach Nato bases in the south of the country.
Contracts to supply British bases and those of other Western forces with fuel, supplies and equipment are held by multinational companies.
However, the business of moving supplies from the Pakistani port of Karachi to British, US and other military contingents in the country is largely subcontracted to local trucking companies. These must run the gauntlet of the increasingly dangerous roads south of Kabul in convoys protected by hired gunmen from Afghan security companies.
The Times has learnt that it is in the outsourcing of convoys that payoffs amounting to millions of pounds, including money from British taxpayers, are given to the Taleban.
The controversial payments were confirmed by several fuel importers, trucking and security company owners. None wanted to be identified because of the risk to their business and their lives. “We estimate that approximately 25 per cent of the money we pay for security to get the fuel in goes into the pockets of the Taleban,” said one fuel importer.
Other than flying in supplies, the only overland route is through Pakistan and Taleban-controlled areas of Afghanistan.
A security company owner explained that a vast array of security companies competed for the trade along the main route south of Kabul, some of it commercial traffic and some supplying Western bases, usually charging about $1,000 (£665) a lorry. Convoys are typically of 40-50 lorries but sometimes up to 100.
Asked whether his company paid money to Taleban commanders not to attack them, he said: “Everyone is hungry, everyone needs to eat. They are attacking the convoys because they have no jobs. They easily take money not to attack.” He said that until about 14 months ago, security companies had been able to protect convoys without paying. But since then, the attacks had become too severe not to pay groups controlling the route. Attacks on the Kandahar road have been an almost daily occurrence this year. On June 24 a 50-truck convoy of supplies was destroyed. Seven drivers were beheaded by the roadside. The situation now was so extreme that a rival company, working south of the city of Ghazni, had Taleban fighters to escort their convoys.
The Taleban are not the only ones making money from the trade; warlords, thieves, policemen and government officials are also taking a cut.
A transport company owner who runs convoys south on the notoriously dangerous Kabul to Kandahar highway said: “We pay taxes to both thieves and the Taleban to get our trucks through Ghazni province and there are several ways of paying. This goes to a very high level in the Afghan Government.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-qKBmQp6yg

according to The Asian News.
MOSQUE leaders and community members have hit back at an unpublished report by a Rochdale imam who has claimed students at some madrassahs are being regularly beaten and abused by their teachers.
Imam Irfan Chishti, a former government adviser on Islamic affairs and religious education teacher who runs the Light of Islam Academy on Milkstone Road, Rochdale, compiled the report based on interviews with victims in madrassahs in the north of England.
But cabinet member for community cohesion, Councillor Mohammed Sharif said mosques in Rochdale had been working quite closely with the council in addressing the issue and many teachers had even participated in child protection courses.
He said: "I have been working closely with mosques and as far as I know in the last year and a half there have been no cases of any physical abuse at these Islamic evening classes. We have been working closely with the council and the police to address this issue. I believe there are incidents of this kind but it's very rare. This is just yet another story to put Muslims in a bad light."
The Lancashire Council of Mosques also agreed physical abuse at madrassahs was uncommon.
Chairman Hamid Qureshi said their organisation was also working closely with mosques throughout Lancashire advising teachers and parents about child protection issues.
"To says it's rife especially in a town like Rochdale is scare-mongering and another tactic for the wider community to crticise Muslims," said Mr Qureshi. "Majority of mosques have now put in place best practice and know that any form of corporal punishment is wrong and illegal. The attitude of parents and mosques have changed where this kind of behaviour is no longer acceptable. Only one or two cases a year come to my attention but it’s never more than that.  Whilst there may be a problem, it’s a very small one."
And so on . . .

From The International Herald Tribune
A Yemeni police official says a suspected Muslim extremist has been arrested for allegedly shooting and killing a Yemeni Jew.
The official says Moshe Yaish Nahari was gunned down in the northern town of Riydah on Thursday but police have little information about the motive behind the killing. I think the writer of this report knows however, merely from the headline he or she has drafted.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity Friday because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Said Jacob, a friend of the Nahari family, confirmed the 39-year-old Jew was gunned down but did not know the identity of the assailant.
I have read that it is not so long ago that Jews were chattel slaves of such little worth that if one was killed, deliberately or by accident the owner could kill a slave belonging to the person responsible. Not take a slave from him as a replacement. Kill a second slave.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A failure to prosecute the "villains" responsible for the financial crisis that brought the United States to its knees will leave the country without the moral compass needed to avert future crises, a Wall Street luminary said.

Pioneer hedge fund manager Michael Steinhardt is angry that the bailout of America is eroding the nation's capitalist ethos while those whose deeds crippled the U.S. economy suffer scant opprobrium, their names still untarnished.

"Something really went wrong here. We're about to enter a period where our budget deficit will dwarf anything we've seen before," Steinhardt told the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit in New York.

"What we really needed a long time ago was a recognition that there were villains apace. The evils of the financial system should have been recognized long before this," said Steinhardt, who no longer manages billions of dollars but whose counsel is sought on Wall Street and among select politicians.

While scornful of the financial executives who should have known better, he also belittled Washington for its lack of leadership and for not spelling out what the future beholds.

The current and former Federal Reserve chairmen have proved ill-prepared for the job, said Steinhardt, a former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, where he helped promote the career of Bill Clinton before he became president.

Of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, often criticized for keeping interest rates so low that they sparked the housing bubble, Steinhardt said he may have been stupid for a long time, "but he wasn't pernicious."

Current Fed chief Ben Bernanke is little better.

"When you see what Bernanke said five, four months ago, it's laughable," he said. "So Bernanke is not a villain but was he prepared for what has happened here? Not in the slightest."

Steinhardt, however, said Americans themselves must share the blame for running away from the debacle and for not questioning the enormous public debt the U.S. government is about to assume.

"If you cannot accept short-term pain, then you do all sorts of things to coat reality, to pretend, to fabricate, to lie. That is what has happened in American business in the last 10 years," he said.

Steinhardt, who now dedicates his time to philanthropy, still hues to the almost impossible standards that made him a legend. His Steinhardt Partners hedge fund returned an annual 24.5 percent after fees over 28 years before he shut the fund in 1995.

Steinhardt is aware of scandal and reputation. His firm was stung by a federal investigation into allegations he and others, including Salomon Brothers, tried to corner the two-year U.S. Treasury market in the early 1990s.

Steinhardt denied any wrongdoing, and paid a fine and fees of more than $70 million to settle the case.

Steinhardt asked that if the government and Americans are unwilling to prosecute by law, what are the consequences of not being responsible and holding the culprits up for contempt?

"The question is, What's going to come of this, if there are going to be no villains?" he said.

"Is Hank Greenberg a villain?" Steinhardt said, referring to the former chief executive of insurer American International Group, recipient of a $152 billion federal bailout after it suffered massive losses mainly on complex securities tied to mortgages that had declined in value.

He rattled off other names: James "Jimmy" Cayne, former CEO and chairman of defunct investment bank Bear Stearns Cos, whose unsustainable leverage in two failed hedge funds sparked the crisis in summer 2007.

And Richard Fuld, ex CEO of failed investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., whom Steinhardt said he saw last week in a restaurant "happy as a hero, blowing kisses."

Finally, he asked, referring to the senior counselor of Citigroup ( and a former Treasury secretary under Clinton. "Is Bob Rubin a villain? Still at Citibank? Is he a villain? You can't name a villain? Is this a villain-less debacle?"

Although a friend of Clinton, Steinhardt knocked Barack Obama's pick of ex-Clinton officials for key positions in his administration. The choices reveal a deep lack of substance on the president-elect's part, he said.

"We have a new president who I find to be an absolute tabula rasa in terms of his knowledge of anything," he said, referring to Obama as a blank slate.

"Pay attention to what Obama says and you will find he hardly ever says anything of consequence."

Steinhardt also railed against Congress, where the quality of intellect "is not exactly awing."

"It seems to me that the intellectual level that we are surrounded with both in government and in the industry is exceptionally low at the moment, it makes me angry."

From AFP:  "Sarcasm finds medical use in dementia detection"

Sarcasm may be the lowest form of wit [Ed.: at least in the opinion of those supremecist pratfallers and aphorists], but Australian scientists are using it to diagnose dementia, according to research published on Friday.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales found that patients under the age of 65 suffering from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), the second most common form of dementia, cannot detect when someone is being sarcastic.

The study, described by its authors as groundbreaking, helps explain why patients with the condition behave the way they do and why, for example, they are unable to pick up their caregivers' moods, the research showed.

"This is significant because if care-givers are angry, sad or depressed, the patient won't pick this up. It is often very upsetting for family members," said John Hodges, the senior author of the paper published in "Brain".

"(FTD) patients present changes in personality and behaviour. They find it difficult to interact with people, they don't pick up on social cues, they lack empathy, they make bad judgements," he told AFP.

"People with FTD become very gullible and they often part with large amounts of money," he said, adding that one in 4,000 people around the world are afflicted with the condition.

Researchers began studying the role of sarcasm in detecting FTD because it requires a patient to spot discrepancies between a person's words and the tone of their voice, Hodges said.

"One of the things about FTD patients is that they don't detect humour -- they are very bad at double meaning and a lot of humour (other than sarcasm) is based on double meaning," he said.

The research, conducted in 2006-07, put 26 sufferers of FTD and 19 Alzheimer's patients through a test in which actors acted out different scenarios using exactly the same words.

While in one scenario, the actors would deliver the lines sincerely, in others they would introduce a thick layer of sarcasm. Patients were then asked if they got the joke, Hodges said.

For example, said Hodges, if a couple were discussing a weekend away and the wife suggested bringing her mother, the husband might say: "Well, that's great, you know how much I like your mother, that will really make it a great weekend."

(That's a bad example.  What if the respondent, like me, really does enjoy the company of their in-laws?)

When the same words were delivered sarcastically and then in a neutral tone, the joke was lost on FTD patients, while the Alzheimer's patients got it.

"The patients with FTD are very literal and they take what is being said as genuine and sincere," said Hodges.

FTD, often referred to as Pick's disease, is similar to Alzheimer's in that it involves a progressive decline in mental powers over a number of years, but FTD affects different regions of the brain.

"It can be very difficult to diagnose in early stages and to separate from depression or, later on, schizophrenia or personality disorders," Hodges said.

The sarcasm test could replace some more expensive and less widely available tests for dementia, he said.

And now, to provide the link to Islam and Muslim-majority countries:

When questioned about the applicability of the test to people from countries not renowned for their appreciation of sarcasm or irony, Hodges said the test could be modified.

 This was a very interesting article. 

Make a quantity of shortcrust pastry, roll out and cut into circles for pasty cases. Mince up some small pigs chitterlings and mix with minced apples, sugar and spice. Then lay generous heaps on the pasty cases, seal and bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes, then lower the oven until the pasties are well cooked. 

"Steinhardt, however, said Americans themselves must share the blame for running away from the debacle and for not questioning the enormous public debt the U.S. government is about to assume.

If you cannot accept short-term pain, then you do all sorts of things to coat reality, to pretend, to fabricate, to lie. That is what has happened in American business in the last 10 years,"'he said."  --- from this story

Surely the same can be said for foreign policy errors by the American, British, French, Israeli, and all other Western governments.

 On the need to recognize how Muslim demands, Muslim aggression, Muslim threats, in Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb, directed at all Infidels and at those considered to be insufficiently Muslim, can it not be said that "Americans themselves must share the blame for running way from the debacle and for not questioning the enormous squandering of resources by the American government"? 

And i"f you cannot accept short-term pain, then you do all sorts of things to coat reality, to pretend, to fabricate, to lie. That is what has happened throughout the Western world, when it comes to Islam, for the last several decades."

Mutatis, as noted, mutandis.

It is amazing to see the word dhimmitude (coined by Bat Ye'or) in this article by Elihu D. Richter in the Jerusalem Post (thanks to "The Law"):

The republished Saudi peace plan - or ultimatum - offers 100 years of dhimmitude, the term for the protected but inferior and vulnerable status of non-Moslem religious and ethnic groupings in Islamic society. It purports to offer normal diplomatic and political relations between Israel and the entire Islamic world if Israel goes back to its 1948 borders and accepts the principle of repatriation of the Palestinian refugees. If Israel does not accept these terms, the subtext is quite clear: The Islamic world retains the option of remaining hostile to our existence.

This subtext rejects a self-evident principle: that Israel's existence and security are, as Barack Obama has declared, sacrosanct. That principle derives from the UN resolutions of 1948 and 1967, and not any decision by our neighbors. Israel is the national home of a first nation returning to its native land. Its existence and security are not negotiable.

To its credit, the Saudi plan implicitly recognizes that the conflict is not between Israel and the Palestinians, but the entire Islamic world. It appears to have come a long way since the three noes of the Arab League's Khartoum summit in 1968: No recognition, no negotiation, no peace. Thirty-four years went by between Khartoum and 2002, when the document was first prepared, and another six to the presentation of the plan in full to the Israeli public. During this time, much blood has been shed in seven wars.

ISRAELIS HAVE good reason to be skeptical about peace plans. While there is a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, more Israelis have died in the 15 years following the Oslo Accords than in the two previous decades of undeclared wars. Therefore the burden of proof is on those who deny that the Saudi plan offers something between dhimmitude at best and a staged dismantling of Israel as the Jewish national home.

Here are the reasons for this conclusion.

The plan contains no commitment to ending incitement and hate language. The flag of Iran, now more powerful than any of the Arab countries, is one of 29 framing the PA announcement. But Iran's promotion of genocidal motifs straight out of Mein Kampf, along with its terror directed at world Jewry and Israel, goes back to 1979. Even though there is no love lost between the Saudis and the Iranians, the Saudi plan ignores the existential dangers posed by Iran's moving toward nuclear capacity, its support of terror organizations committed to Israel's destruction and its ever increasing bullying of its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia itself.

Yet Iranian incitement and hate language is merely one of several epicenters for state sanctioned, sponsored and supported anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism throughout the Arab and Islamic world. Since 2002, when the plan was first published, the Arab regimes, notably Saudi Arabia and Egypt, seem neither able nor willing to curb this toxic incitement in their media, mosques, school texts and Internet - a precondition for preparing their publics for a new era of mutual respect, live and let live, and dignity. Because such incitement and hate language ensures the intergenerational transmission of hate, it means that diplomatic and political agreements the regimes will sign on will not be sustainable.

SINCE 2002, the Arab League's and League of Islamic Countries' message to Israel refers to "normal relations between states," but the messages to its own populations are still permeated by hate and incitement. None of the Arab states have banned distribution of Mein Kampf and they continue to propagate propaganda based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They also continue to use UN diplomatic forums for delegitmizing Israel. Arab diplomats still engage in crude public attempts at delegitimization, such as at the Annapolis "peace summit," where they refused to enter through the same door with Israeli diplomats.

Such gestures, if anything, delegitimize their practitioners. State sanctioned incitement has been repackaged as anti-Zionism. Even the newly "moderate" West Bank PA still engages in varieties of soft incitement, such as omitting Israel from its maps and referring to toleration in terms of the Islamic-Christian tradition, thus implicitly rendering Israel Judenrein.

The plan says nothing about non-state actors, notably Hizbullah - for all practical purposes, an agent of Iran - and Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip, and what they will do, no matter what the leaders of Arab countries decide to sign on.

The plan refers to rights to repatriation of the descendants of approximately 600,000 Palestinian refugees from 1949, but ignores the rights of some 870,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands and their descendants. Nor is there any reference to the effect of Arab pressures on the British Mandate in bringing about the White Paper, which was, for all practical purposes, a death sentence for millions of Jews caught in Hitler's Europe. The harsh truth is that neither Palestinian nor Jewish survivors or descendants can return to the homes of their parents.

THE APPALLING treatment of religious minorities by many Arab regimes is another reason for skepticism concerning the Saudi plan. Coptic and Assyrian Christians, Baha'is, Armenians, Yazdis and other minority religious group have experienced persecution, expulsions and genocidal mass atrocities in many of the 29 countries, notably Egypt, Iraq, Sudan and Iran. In the PA itself, since the Oslo Accords, the Christian population is rapidly diminishing. Here would be the elements of an Israeli answer to the billion or so people in the Arab and Islamic world.

The first requirement of any peace plan has to be respect for life and human dignity of all minorities in the region. This means respecting the sacrosanct status of Israel's existence and security, and in parallel, stopping the persecution, overt and covert, of religious minorities and eliminating incitement and hate language in school texts, mosques and media. It means fostering more open and direct contacts on based on respect for life, live and let live, and promoting such contacts in matters which promote and protect life, not death: water technology, agriculture, renewable energy, public health and medicine.

Israelis expect respect for human life and dignity, not dhimmitude.

A pot-warming tale of British - or Indian - bravery from The Times:

Lethal weapon?

A woman shopkeeper fought off two armed robbers – with a cup of tea. Varsha Patel, 45, had just poured the steaming-hot tea when two men wearing balaclavas and wielding knives burst into a village store in Kensworth, Bedfordshire, which she has run with her husband, Yogesh, 50, for the past 20 years.

As they made a grab for the till, Mrs Patel hurled the tea into the face of one and threw the empty mug at the other’s head. She then stepped back to grab a bottle of whisky to hurl at them, but the two thieves fled, taking only a scratch-card dispenser.

She said: “I was scared afterwards but at the time I just reacted on instinct . . . I’m glad they ran away.”

*Tea leaf, for the benefit of Americans and others who don't know, is Cockney rhyming slang for thief.

Hugo Rifkind on Freudian slips:

A Freudian slip, as a wise man once said, is when you say one thing and mean your mother. It's a great gag, but it's not quite true. Actually with a Freudian slip you say exactly what you mean. You just don't mean to say it.

Consider Gordon Brown, on Wednesday, telling the House of Commons that he had “saved the world”. If he hadn't meant it, it would merely have been a gaffe. But he did mean it. He just didn't mean to say it. It's an entirely different thing.

[...]

My favourite is from George Bush Sr. You might find it on YouTube. He's talking about working with Ronald Reagan, and he says: “I'm proud to have been his partner.” Then the brow furrows. You can see he knows he's said something that may cause a snigger. He grows flustered. It gets worse. He tries to say “we've had some setbacks” but he actually says “we've had some sex”. He opens his mouth, and you can see right through into his brain.

All the best Freudian slips are about sex. Another YouTube classic comes from an American TV anchor, I couldn't tell you who. “Right after the break, we're going to interview Eric, who climbed Mount Everest,” she says. “But... he's gay. I mean, excuse me. He's blind. So we'll, uh, hear about that.” Lord knows what was going on there, but surely something was.

Poor Gordon Brown. He's probably had the phrase rattling around in his head for weeks. Don't say “save the world”! Don't say “save the world”! Bang. Aaargh. Now, before long, he'll have to speak at some sort of climate-change bash, and he'll be expected to say “save the world” and he'll end up saying “save the banks”. And that won't look good, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpi6fXaJruU