Is there one?

Esperanto shouldn't really need one, should it?

They say Jesus wasn't born in Ireland because they couldn't find three wise men and a virgin. But is the Virgin Birth true? The Spectator asked a few important people. Here is a sample of answers, in descending order of clarity:

His Eminence Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster

Of course. All teaching about Mary the Mother of God points us to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. The miracle of his birth shows us that he is God-with-us. Jesus has only God as Father and Mary as Mother and in his birth we are adopted as children of the Father in the Holy Spirit. We look to Mary as a Mother who loves us.

Charles Moore

Jesus Christ was true God and true Man: the Virgin Birth is an obstetric statement of this fact.

"An obstetric statement"? That phrase is pregnant with meaning.

Ann Widdecombe

If Christ was also God, then he cannot have been born purely of humans, so his incarnation as a man must have been via a virgin. Thus I see no reason to doubt the testimony of scripture that Jesus was not the son of Joseph, but of God.

Edward Stourton

Hmmm. I can see the logic which argues that if you believe in the Incarnation, you need to believe in the Virgin Birth, so I suppose I ought to say yes ...but I wouldn’t say it is a constant source of inspiration when I reflect on the great questions of life.

James Delingpole

Look, I’ve successfully survived 42 years as a member of the Church of England without ever having to give serious thought to the Virgin Birth and I jolly well don’t see why I should be put on the spot now just for the sake of a Speccie feature. I guess that makes me a ‘Don’t Know’, which is a terrible thing to admit given that I’m halfway towards being a pillar of my beloved Chelsea Old Church. But that’s the great thing about being C of E, isn’t it? If I were Catholic, I suppose I’d have to find the issue intensely important. Me, I care more about hymns having the right tunes, and the Prayer Book being 1662.

The Most Reverend and Right Hon. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Yes; I believe that the conception of Jesus was a moment when the creative action of God produced a reality as new in its way as the first moment of creation itself. And I believe that what opened the way for this was the work of God through human history over centuries, coming to its fullest moment in Mary’s consent to God’s call. The recognition of the uniqueness and newness of Jesus is a recognition of the absolute freedom of God to break the chains of cause and effect that lock us into our sins and failures; the virginal conception is an outward sign of this divine freedom to make new beginnings.

New Duranty: The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.

The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.

The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.

The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.

Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10 percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929...

Ain't We Got Fun?

My toilet had been making strange whistling noises for a few weeks before I finally got round to calling a plumber. I had put if off, not out of laziness, but in order to recreate the seduction scene in Lolita, in which flushing toilets feature noisily. Sadly it did nothing for my love life, so it had to be fixed.

To avoid a massive call-out charge - some charge £75 just to cross the threshold - I used the phone number on a card in a shop window: "Need a plumber? Call Chris. No job too big or too small."

"Christopher Plumber," I thought to myself, and for a short time my head was filled with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. When Chris arrived, however, he looked nothing like this:

In fact he looked about sixteen going on seventeen. As you get older, plumbers, like policemen, look younger. But he fixed the whistling toilet in no time and charged only £20, which is dirt cheap for London. He was also polite, and explained what he was doing, rather than patronising me as some workmen do when they're dealing with a woman. He is a fine young man and handles a ballcock with aplomb.

The amazing thing about Chris was that he was called Chris. Plumbers are usually called Irek, Wojtek or Zdzislaw. The Polish plumber is much to be admired, not least because he is hated by the French. Hard working and cheap, Polish plumbers and builders have been a boon in London. Recently they have started to raise their prices, however, and it is pleasing to see them undercut by a Brit. I hope that, long term, the Polish plumber will have served to encourage our own plumbers rather than take away their jobs. Besides, what is the emigration of Polish plumbers to Britain doing to Poland? Anne Applebaum in The Spectator:

Hmm, let me see,’ said Tomasz the painter,

rubbing his temples. He was trying to think of a plumber who could install a new bathroom shower. ‘Well, there’s Jacek — no, sorry, he’s gone to Dublin. There’s Lech — no, I’m afraid he’s away, I think in Bristol. There used to be that guy, what was his name, Jackowski — no, he’s in London.’

He thought for a few more minutes. ‘Sorry,’ he said at last. ‘Can’t recommend anyone.’ Thus did I discover that within a hundred-mile radius of my Polish country house — a territory that includes the city of Bydgoszcz (pop. 400,000), and the surrounding Pomeranian countryside (add another 100,000) — there was not, at that moment, a single plumber to be found.

That was last summer. Since then — since they started regular flights from Bydgoszcz to Dublin and Liverpool, since people started offhandedly referring to ‘the million’ Poles living in the British Isles — things have got worse. A piece of landscaping I lazily put off last year costs twice as much this year, because anyone who can handle a shovel is planting roses in the Home Counties. A recent attempt to buy a child’s ice hockey helmet ended in failure because there aren’t enough drivers to drive ice hockey helmets to Warsaw from wherever they are produced. My local bakery now has queues into the street because there aren’t enough salesgirls to serve customers. And pretty much every restaurant I walk past has a sign in the window: We’re Hiring!

[...]

Warsaw’s employers are, of course, fighting back with a variety of strategies, most of which at first involved Ukrainians....If the Ukrainians move to Poland to replace the Poles who’ve moved to Britain, who will do the work in Ukraine? Presumably the Kazakhs — which means that the Kazakhs will have to import Kirghiz, and the Kirghiz will eventually have to import Chinese, and the Chinese, finally, will recruit Californians. According to one recent press report, some Poles are already shortcutting this process and hiring directly from China right now.

It's globalisation, you see. The world, we have been told, is getting more global. It's enough to drive you up the pole.

New Duranty: WASHINGTON — Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development, according to American and alliance officials.

The reviews are an acknowledgment of the need for greater coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, halting the rising opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control.

Taken together, these efforts reflect a growing apprehension that one of the administration’s most important legacies — the routing of Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — may slip away, according to senior administration officials.

Unlike the administration’s sweeping review of Iraq policy a year ago, which was announced with great fanfare and ultimately resulted in a large increase in troops, the American reviews of the Afghan strategy have not been announced and are not expected to result in a similar infusion of combat forces, mostly because there are no American troops readily available.

The administration is now committed to finding an international coordinator, described as a “super envoy,” to synchronize the full range of efforts in Afghanistan, and to continue pressing for more NATO troops to fight an insurgency that made this the most violent year since the Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in December 2001.

“We are looking for ways to gain greater strategic coherence,” said a senior administration official involved in the review process...

[Hint: a grand "coherent" strategy may have something to do with Islam.]

Yes, we at New English Review are privileged to be on the White House Christmas card list. Which means either a) they never read us, or b) they send out millions of these things and never cull the list, or both.

I have the card in front of me and on the cover is a painting of the East Colonnade outside showing a snow on the ground a statue, tree and reflecting pool and looking inside the White House window is a Christmas tree. When I opened it, my first thought was, "boy, this was designed not to offend anybody."

Barbara Walters was offended anyway. Here's her take:

"First of all, let me show you the cover of the White House, which is nice and bland…So that's pleasant enough.  This is what interested me, that it is a religious Christmas card.  Usually in the past when I have received a Christmas card, it's been 'happy holiday's' and so on- And this says:

"'You alone are the Lord.  You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them.  You gave life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.' 

"That's from Nehemiah in the Old Testament.  I don't remember- and I'm sure people will remind me-getting a religious card.  Now does this also go to agnostics and atheists and Muslims and -"

Moderator Whoopie Goldberg and co-host Sherri Shepherd tried to steer clear of controversy by joking that the Scriptures were about Walters, but Walters persisted in her critique, asking, "Don't you think it's a little interesting that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card?" ...

The card also says, "May the joy of all creation fill your heart this blessed season."
The nerve.

Instead of counting sheep, or even Jabberwockies, Lewis Carroll used to send himself to sleep by means of mathematical problems like this one:

The Chelsea Pensioners

Problem. — If 70 per cent have lost an eye, 75 per cent an ear, 80 per cent an arm, 85 per cent a leg: what percentage, at least, must have lost all four?

Answer. — Ten.

Solution. — (I adopt that of Polar Star, as being better than my own.) Adding the wounds together, we get 70+75+80+85=310, among 100 men; which gives 3 to each, and 4 to 10 men. Therefore the least percentage is 10.

Nineteen answers have been received. One is “5” but, as no working is given with it, it must, in accordance with the rule, remain “a deed without a name”. Janet makes it “35 7/10”. I am sorry she has misunderstood the question, and has supposed that those who had lost an ear were 75 per cent of those who had lost an eye; and so on. Of course, on this supposition, the percentages must all be multiplied together. This she has done correctly, but I can give her no honours, as I do not think the question will fairly bear her interpretation. Three Score and Ten makes it “19 3/8” Her solution has given me — I will not say “many anxious days and sleepless nights”, for I wish to be strictly truthful, but — some trouble in making any sense at all of it. She makes the number of “pensioners wounded once” to be 310 (“per cent,” I supposd): dividing by 4, she gets 77½ as “average percentage”: again dividing by 4, she gets 19 3/8 as “percentage wounded four times”. Does she suppose wounds of different kinds to “absorb” each other, so to speak! Then, no doubt, the data are equivalent to 77 pensioners with one wound each and a half-pensioner with a half-wound. And does she then suppose these concentrated wounds to be transferable, so that 3/4 of these unfortunates can obtain perfect health by handing over their wounds to the remaining 1/4? Granting these suppositions, her answer is right; or rather if the question had been, “A road is covered with one inch of gravel, along 77½ per cent of it. How much of it could be covered 4 inches deep with the same material?” her answer would have been right. But alas, that wasn’t the question! Delta makes some most amazing assumptions: “let every one who has not lost an eye have lost an ear,” “let every one who has not lost both eyes and ears have lost an arm.” Her ideas of a battlefield are grim indeed. Fancy a warrior who would continue fighting after losing both eyes, both ears, and both arms! This is a case which she (or “it “?) evidently considers possible.

Next come eight writers who have made the unwarrantable assumption that, because 70 per cent have lost an eye, therefore 30 per cent have not lost one, so that they have both eyes. This is illogical. If you give me a bag containing 100 sovereigns, and if in an hour I come to you (my face not beaming with gratitude nearly so much as when I received the bag) to say, “I am sorry to tell you that 70 of these sovereigns are bad,” do I thereby guarantee the other 30 to be good? Perhaps I have not tested them yet. The sides of this illogical octagon are as follows, in alphabetical order: Algernon Bray, Dinah Mite, G. S. C., Jane E., J. D. W., Magpie (who makes the delightful remark, “Therefore 90 per cent have two of something,” recalling to one’s memory that fortunate monarch with whom Xerxes was so much pleased that “he gave him ten of everything”!), S. S G., and Tokio.

Bradshaw of the Future and T. R. do the question in a piecemeal fashion — on the principle that the 70 per cent and the 75 per cent, though commenced at opposite ends of the 100, must overlap by at least 45 per cent; and so on. This is quite correct working, but not, I think, quite the best way of doing it.

The other five competitors will, I hope, feel themselves sufficiently glorified by being placed in the first class, without my composing a Triumphal Ode for each!

The answer is obvious when you think about it. Unfortunately, because I thought the answer was obvious, I didn't think about it. Making the same mistake as Janet above, I jumped to the conclusion that those who lost an ear were 70% of those who lost an eye, and so forth. Multiplying away proudly, just like Janet, I was doing what students do so often: answering the question I wish had been set, rather than the one that was set.

Such problems, I would have thought, would keep you awake rather than send you to sleep. But then I'm not Lewis Carroll. (There's nothing like chocolate for a maths problem. I didn't say there was nothing better; just that there is nothing like it.)

"Thus did I discover that within a hundred-mile radius of my Polish country house — a territory that includes the city of Bydgoszcz"  -- from this entry about Polish plumbers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMuncRnOo-k

At the gym, in order to add mental to physical torture, I read through a few recent back issues of "The Nation" someone had left behind, along with all the magazines devoted to Men's Health, and Women's Health and so on. Amazing to see that nothing much makes an impression on "The Nation" -- certainly nothing about Islam, that Total Belief System, manages to make on impression on its otherwise quite impressionable editors and contributors. They still rant about Bush, though their criticisms of the war in Iraq are the usual Alexander-Cockburn-lite stuff, not the deadly criticisms made here. Still the same stuff about "Palestine" and a presumably "nationalist struggle" (Frieda Kirchwey would not be pleased). And nothing at all about Muslim mistreatment -- rooted in the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam -- from the resident "feminist" (her description), Katha Pollitt who apparently is unwilling to think through what Islam is all about -- when what Islam is all about is as close to what Katha Pollitt's relatives had to worry about in the 1930s. No, none of it seems to matter.

But "The Nation" exhibits an extreme form of the mental desarroi of the age that can be found, in less extreme versions, all over the goddam place. Even the cheekbones of Katrina vanden Heuvel, and all that they promise, will not -- no more than the perfumes of Arabia -- sweeten this.

Tad Safran writes in The Times (hat tip Arts & Letters Daily) These are actually the most polite parts - the whole thing is quite nasty, but funny too.

In the iconic chick-flick Bridget Jones’s Diary, the title character is a sad, lonely, overweight, posh-sounding chain-smoker in her thirties with a drinking problem and no dating prospects. She then, one day, goes to the gym for an hour or two, spends £200 at Topshop, reads a self-help book and, lo and behold, she finds herself in the delightful position of having to decide between Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

Women of Britain: Bridget Jones’s Diary is not a documentary. It’s a work of fiction, a fairytale. The fact is that control-top granny pants are simply not a substitute for regular exercise, thoughtful grooming and a healthy diet. Certainly not if you’re single and interested in men.

Although I am American, England has been my home since I was three years old. I now split my time between Los Angeles and London and regularly visit New York. There are many, many differences between the British and the Americans, but none more glaring than UK women’s approach to their own upkeep.

I am a massive fan of British women. UK girls, in my opinion, are the greatest natural beauties in the world . . . when they’re 17 or 18 years old. The girls I was surrounded by when I was a teenager were sublime roses with lustrous hair, flawless skin, bright eyes and lithe, athletic bodies. They dressed as if there would be a prize at the end of the night for the girl wearing the least. I then went away to Philadelphia for university. Four years later, I came back and wondered: “What the hell happened to all the beautiful girls I knew?” My first assumption was that one half of them had eaten the other half and washed them down with a crate of lager. These girls looked phenomenal when looking good took no effort. But when British women get to the age where they have to make an effort, they appear unable, or uninterested, in rising to the challenge.

I’m recently back from a two-month sojourn in Los Angeles and New York. Maybe I have come back with fresh eyes. Maybe I have grown accustomed to the effort American women put into their upkeep. Either way, you don’t exactly need callipers to figure out in which country the women look after themselves more...

I don’t want you to think, though, that I believe American women have nothing to learn from British women. The irony is that, as obsessed as American women are with their looks, they totally ignore their social skills. Within 10 minutes of meeting an American woman, I guarantee you will know her salary and most recent medical/ dental procedure. They all but turn up with their CV printed out. In return, they will immediately want to know “all” about you, ie, how much you earn, how much you have earned in the past, what your future earning potential is, whether you own property, whether you have an investment portfolio, where you shop, where you “vacation”, what you drive and how large your parents’ house is. I once got to the end of a date in New York, pulled out my credit card to pay and the girl solemnly remarked: “A green American Express card? I didn’t know they still made them in that colour.” ...

Nobody’s perfect. Certainly not the men who get to take out these women. British women are, without a doubt, the best to have a pint and a laugh with. They are the most self-reliant, uncomplicated and unflap-pable. That they are neither obsessed with their looks, nor insecurely competitive, are wonderful qualities. And their self-depreca-tion is incredibly endearing. But when it comes to making the all-important first impression, do you really want it to be, “I’ll bet she was really hot ten years ago”?

My un-Polish and unpolished plumber fixed my toilet with a spanner and with aplomb. Likewise, the builder who came round the other day worked out what was wrong with my occasionally-unfit-for-purpose occasional table. That is to say he hit the nail on the head, and back into the wood. And the one in the chair that had pierced our soul and arsehole.

What did these tradesmen have in their tool bag that made them (literally?) a cut above the rest? A good screw? Elbow grease? A level spirit? No, these men had Zeugma. Never leave home without it. Keep it in your bag and in your heart.

Long before Belinda feared she might stain her honour or her new brocade and Queen Anne did sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea, people were yoking things together inappropriately, often for comic effect. The trivial hooks up with the serious, the concrete with the abstract and the literal with the metaphorical. Here’s a definition to whet your appetite and wet your whistle. (That isn’t zeugma, at least I don’t think it is, because it’s two different “wets”. I’m not sure what it is – nonsense, probably.)

A term used in several ways, all involving a sort of "yoking": (1) as a synonym of SYLLEPSIS: when an object-taking word (preposition or transitive verb) has two or more objects on different levels, such as concrete and abstract, as in Goldsmith’s witty sentence, "I had fancied you were gone down to cultivate matrimony and your estate in the country," wherein figurative and literal senses of the transitive "cultivate" are yoked together by "and"; (2) when two different words that sound exactly alike are yoked together, as in "He bolted the door and his dinner," wherein "bolted" is actually two different concrete verbs….

I like this, and thought I had got the hang of it, but then I read Dot Wordsworth, and it slipped through my fingers again.

I’m not sure about that row of tents. But it doesn’t matter a hill of beans.

The Local (hat tip: Gates of Vienna): Colleagues of the 40 year-old sociology lecturer murdered at Örebro University on Tuesday fear for their safety amid suspicions that the motive was political.

Fuat Deniz researched within the field of the Assyrian genocide in the Ottoman empire and other researchers working in the field have been threatened, according to David Gaunt at Södertörn University College. Gaunt has worked with Fuat Deniz and they held several lectures and seminars together.

"On several occasions at our seminars people would attend claiming to be journalists only to then walk around photographing delegates," Gaunt told Svenska Dagbladet.

It is reported that researchers have been harassed, received death threats and been labeled terrorists. Gaunt reports having been followed by security police on trips to Turkey and describes being subjected to a smear campaign by a Turkish newspaper.

"All those interested in Christian minorities in Turkey are considered a threat," said Gaunt.

Deniz was internationally renowned for his work with the Assyrian genocide in the Ottoman empire and was scheduled to speak at a conference on religious minorities in the Netherlands today.

Fuat Deniz was stabbed to death in a university building in Örebro on Tuesday. His killer remains at large.

The suspiciously metrosexual Tad Safman's article, linked in Rebecca's post here, prompted this response on The Times letters page - from an American woman:

As a corn-dog-eating, baseball-cap-wearing woman from the heart of Ohio, I can tell you that American women are just as “unkempt and lazy about grooming” as anybody else.

If you want to see giant butts, greasy ponytails and buck teeth, take a stroll through the Super K-Mart in Amherst, Ohio, on any day of the week.

By the way, I think Tad knows a little too much about eyelash curlers.

I'll drink to that. Down the pub, not the gym. Grooming's for horses (and paedophiles).What a soppy 'aporth.

"Palestinian doctors referred Jamal to Tal Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv in March 1994."
-- from this article on the Al Dura case

Arabs, not only the locals but Arabs those with especially difficult medical problems, arrive  from all over the Middle East, come to Israel, one learns, for medical care. The Arabs in Israel receive, often for free, from such hospitals as Hadassah, a level of  care incomparably better than what they could get elsewhere.

This is not a story in Israel, because it is simply taken for granted. And it is not a story outside of Israel, because the Israelis are not good at making such things heard. But what BBC reporter or bureau chief, for the BBC will report on the free or almost free care lavished by Jewish doctors on those Arabs who fill the charity wards of the Jewish hospitals of Israel? One of the main reasons that the Arabs in the east part of Jerusalem, parts  that the Olmert regime plans to surrender, oppose that plan ,is that they fear losing that free and excellent medical care supplied by the Israelis.

But who in the outside world knows that the "Nazi" Israelis, instead of setting up Auschwitzes, treat -- every day -- with a level of care that rivals the best in the West -- the very Arabs who have no difficulty, many of them, in demonizing Israel, even if their own experience tells them it is all nonsense and lies? What is one's own experience, the evidence of one's own senses, for those brainwashed in hate, a hate that comes from the atmospherics of hate, that Muslim Arab societies. And Muslim Arab societies are suffering almost universally from thieving rulers, whether it is the Al-Saud skimming a trillion off the top, or Mubarak with his Family-and-Friends plan, taking more modest sums, tens of millions, and not from the national wealth, but rather from the foreign aid that, it might be argued, the scheming Egyptian rulers deserve for playing the role that they do, in order to keep that (chiefly) American aid flowing.

Clownish "journalists" who are merely spaniels of the P.A. regime, and whose stock in trade is whipping up, in every conceivable way, hatred for Israel, are reporting for the western media. These ""journalists" (see MEMRI, see MEMRI for all kinds of transcripts), and tapes of those "Arab journalists" and the ones Simon Wilson, who has now brought his anti-Israel sneers to Harvard classes as a Nieman Fellow, hired, or the three whose bias and behavior became too extreme, and was attracting too much attention, even for the BBC, that  the most egregious cases have been moved. Orla Guerin, married to a "Palestinian" Arab, now reporting, with less chance to indulge in her anti-Israel viciousness, though one may be sure there will be no reports from Orla Guerin about the growing Muslim threat in Capetown, the Muslim boycotts of Jewish businesses, or the local muftis with their fatwas, and the campaigns of Da'wa, and all the rest of it. Barbara Plett (the one who wept, on the air, when Arafat died), has been moved to Pakistan (or is it Afghanistan?). The hard-voiced Lyse Doucet has been moved to Afghanistan (or is it Pakistan?). And the BBC Bureau Chief, fresh-faced Simon Wilson, this year one of two dozen enjoying a Niemann Fellowship at Harvard, is limited to injecting his anti-Israel venom into class discussions. No doubt the BBC’s Jerusalem bureau was left in reliably anti-Israel, pro-“Palestinian” hands.

What Western journalist reports about this? Did Lyse Doucet, did Orla Guerin, did Barbara Plett, in all their thousands of hours of reporting, ever mention the spectacular medical care that Israeli doctors provide – often free – to “Palestinian” as to other Arabs? No? Why not? Isn’t that quite a story, especially all those Arabs who show up with difficult cases from Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, even the Gulf states? When one of those Israeli doctors, who spent much of his time treating Arab patients, was murdered by Arab (“Palestinian”) terrorists, why did the BBC not cover it, and in covering it, at least give those outside Israel a little glimpse into what actually goes on?

Are we to believe that Orla Guerin, Barbara Plett, Lyse Doucet, and Simon Wilson never had to go to doctor, never visited an Israeli hospital, never noticed the Arab charity patients filling the waiting rooms, waiting to be offered a level of medical care equal to the best that the richest Arab oil sheiks can obtain? Isn’t that a story?

Of course it isn’t. It doesn’t fit the script. The Israelis are "Nazis" in the official Arab script. And as even the Arabs are dimly aware that the real Nazis -- the ones they so admired and to so many of whom they gave not only refuge to but important positions after the war -- did not offer free and excellent medical care to the Jews of Europe, and so this little story has to be not only not reported on, but kept quiet, if possible not mentioned at all.

It doesn't fit. It is news that doesn't fit. Not on the BBC. Not in Le Monde. Not in The Guardian.

Not, for that matter, even in The Bandar Beacon with its nauseating and absurd missing-the-point sob story about how the bad Israelis prevent little "Palestinian" deaf children from getting those batteries that will allow them to hear -- as if such batteries, and a lot more besides, are not incorporated into that weaponry that the "Palestinians" have no difficulty spending tens of millions of dollars on, or that batteries, along with all the explosives, might easily have been brought in from Gaza, or as if the billions siphoned away from Infidel aid, by the various "Palestinian" warlords -- Slow and Fast Jihadists -- for their own purposes, could not also have bought, along with those villas in the south of France, and college tuition in the West for those warlords' children, a few batteries for those "deaf children" who, the vicious reporter viciously reports, and in turn that report is viciously carried by The Bandar Beacon (or "Washington Post"), owe their current state to those wicked Israelis, the same Israelis who spend a fortune every year on the medical care supplied to Arabs not only in Israel, but from all over the Middle East.

Absurd and disgusting. But not, at this point, surprising. Nothing, at this point, surprises.

Photographed by my husband early one morning last week while out and about.

MEMRI Blog: Columnist Burak Bekdil of Turkish Daily News in his article yesterday, questioned the logic behind statistics. He wrote that according to a nine-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Strategies, two-thirds of adults in Turkey hold an unfavorable opinion about the United States and the percentage of Turks who think the American state is a danger to world peace (66%) was highest among the nine countries surveyed.

The same survey also revealed that only 1% of Turks think Iran is a global security threat, and 4 % see Al-Qaeda as a global menace. Bekdil asks “Do Turks have terribly confused minds? How can they believe the U.S. to be a far bigger threat than a terrorist organization that bombed Istanbul a few years ago, killing over 60 people?”

He continues to wonder, “How can it be that 47% of the people vote for a party that is friendly to the U.S. yet 66% of the same people see that country as biggest security threat? The explanation must be ‘sentimental thinking in reaction to U.S. policies combined with unusual tolerance to the incumbent AKP government’.

Bekdil explains the possible reasons why Iran is not seen as a threat by the fact that as Iran is co-Muslim and that there is admiration in Turkey for anyone who can stand up against America that Turks are so angry with.

At the risk of turning the fine wine of a good debate into the bitter vinegar of an overly contentious subject (Esperanto with 28 citations on the statistical information of The Iconoclast), allow me to make a final statement to those who still have an open mind.

Mary Jackson’s latest remark on the issue takes the form of a question which, as usual, she also provides an answer for - “Is there an Esperanto Thesaurus? Esperanto should not really need one should it?” This tag question, as most native English speakers are aware of, is simply a rhetorical question asking for confirmation of a statement or belief and not a real question. This rhetorical device however often causes confusion for foreign learners of the language. If she is asking a real question, it deserves an answer.

For those who are actually still seeking to learn more about Esperanto, let me address a few final remarks on the matter as a native American speaker of English who is multilingual and fluent in Spanish, Hebrew, Danish and Esperanto.

The latest edition of the most widely circulated and thorough Esperanto-Esperanto dictionary La Nova Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto (The New PIV), also dubbed PIV2 (published in 2002 and already sold out) includes about 1,300 pages, 17,000 words and 47,000 lexical units. Many synonyms are mentioned in the definition of words and countless examples are given of how various grammatical and lexical devices are utilized in the form of prefixes, suffixes and infixes to alter the basic meaning of the root part of a word. I gave examples of this in my current December article “Why Esperanto is Different” as follows…..

There is no need for a separate Thesaurus as the speaker is perfectly capable of independently forming words according to the above schematic system. Yes, Esperanto also has synonyms like English that are based on a single word such as “bald” (kalva in Esperanto) and another that makes use of a specific descriptive ending attached to an independent word like “hairless“ (senhara in Esperanto). The prefix “sen” in Esperanto fulfils the same function as the ending -less in English to signify the lack of something speechless, mindless, fearless, etc.). English makes use of many of the same principles of word formation as Esperanto, the difference is one of degree and regularity. Esperanto is not a Stepford Wife and those who love her do not do so out of love of any theory but because they have found her to be so useful as well as attractive AND challenging.

I have written three books and more than 250 published articles and book reviews in English and a few dozen short articles in Spanish and Hebrew. Although I am fluent in these languages, I still make mistakes including in my own native language and even after proof-reading by friends, colleagues and my wife, have sometimes discovered an error in spelling, grammar or lack of clarity. This occurred much less frequently with the two short Esperanto plays and short articles I have had published.

In the book “La Bona Lingvo” by Claude Piron, whose five minute video Mary Jackson suggests (as I do) readers watch, to get an impression of the character of Esperanto, the following example by the author serves to illustrate how rich Esperanto is in synonyms. Piron names approximately 50 words and expressions in Esperanto for the equivalent French word timide (timid in English and timema in Esperanto), each one with its own nuance and amplified significance. I will analyze just one of the 50 to give the reader an idea of Esperanto’s richness and flexibility. One of the fifty synonyms is alfrontevitema. The reader immediately recognizes the root part of the word is alfront- signifying confrontation. The subsequent part of the word -evit- is the Esperanto root defining avoidance; em- is part of the final ending denoting tendency, quality, susceptibility and the final letter -a denotes an adjective. Without “thinking”, the Esperanto reader, even if he had never seen this word before can appreciate that its meaning has to do with fear some people are prone to when confronting issues and problems.

In an earlier reply to the repeated assertions that somehow Esperanto is not a living language, I made the comparison with Modern Hebrew and the Nynorsk language (one of two official languages in Norway) to show that all three were subject to exactly the same critical remarks in their early formative period of development. All three began as desk projects and were not the native, habitual or primary language of anyone. All three encountered the same criticism as Esperanto that they were “artificial”. Speakers of Yiddish mocked and satirized Eliezer ben-Yehuda and the woefully inadequate vocabulary of early Hebrew speakers in Palestine right up until the moment the British mandatory authorities recognized it an official language in 1921. Yiddish speaking visitors remarked that even in the 1920s, many Zionists promoting Hebrew lacked the necessary words for many essential objects and relations and spoke in a garbled, uncertain and “unnatural” way.

The same occurred in Norway where Ivar Aasen and his supporters had to find a “neutral” form for what they reconstructed and believed was the original Norwegian language that prevailed in the country before the Black Plague. Centuries of Danish rule had imposed a literary speech (Danish as spoken by educated Norwegians) and referred to it erroneously as “Norwegian“ something that many nationalists could not accept as the proper vehicle of expression and culture for their country and its aspirations to become an independent state.

All three are thriving today and two are the official languages of modern states - Israel and Norway.

Readers who would like to learn more about these and other language contradictions, revivals and conflicts are referred to my book “Nations, Language and Citizenship” (McFarland & Company, Inc. Jefferson, North Carolina and London. 2004.  ISBN 0-7864-1710-2.)

Esperanto differs in that its speakers are not concentrated in a physical territory or defined by a common ethnicity. Many younger people today who are Esperanto speakers are NOT interested in the “Esperanto Movement” , propagandizing on its behalf or believe that the future of the language depends in any way on the long aspired goal of many idealists to achieve some form of international recognition. They are neither cranks nor idealists but continue to create an Esperanto culture that is shared around the world. They do so because they have found a vehicle of expression that they can shape that is largely free from the dominating influences of the major national languages.

Those who attended the recent Restoration Weekend, and who are familiar with the work of Sellar and Yeatman, are well placed to attempt this test paper.

For those who didn't, here is a quick re-cap of my post last year:

Recently we have been hearing talk of a “Restoration Weekend”. The term is not well known on this side of the Atlantic, and I have been speculating as to what might go on at one of these weekends. Perhaps it was something of this kind:

The Restoration of the English monarchy under Charles II was a Good Thing. Among others, “pretty, witty” Nell Gwynn said what a pleasure it was to be under Charles II. Here is some historical background from – inevitably – Sellar and Yeatman’s 1066 And All That:

With the ascension of Charles I to the throne, we come to ….the utterly memorable Struggle between the Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right and Repulsive).

Charles I was a Cavalier King and therefore had a small pointed beard, long flowing curls, and a large, flat, flowing hat and gay attire. The Roundheads, on the other hand, were clean-shaven and wore tall, conical hats, and sombre garments. Under these circumstances a Civil War was inevitable.

My test paper contains just one question:

Question One

English - wrong but wromantic. Esperanto - right and repulsive.

Discuss. In Volapük. Do not attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.

Supplementary questions

Why are you so numb and vague about Arbella Stuart?
Who was in whose what, and how many miles awhat?
What price glory? 

ANKARA (Reuters) -- An Italian Roman Catholic priest was stabbed on Sunday at his church in the city of Izmir in western Turkey, police said, in an incident that recalled the fatal shooting of another Italian priest in Turkey in 2006.

The priest, identified as Adriano Franchini, was taken to hospital. His life was not in danger, a police spokesman told Reuters. He had been stabbed in the stomach.

Police have detained three people, the spokesman said, adding it was too soon to say what the motive of the attack was.

The incident follows a spate of attacks in mainly Muslim but secular Turkey in recent years on Christian targets.

Italian Catholic priest Andrea Santoro was shot dead in his church in the Turkish Black Sea city of Trabzon in February 2006 by a teenager who is now in jail.

In April this year three Christians -- a German national and two Turks -- were killed in a Bible publishing house in the eastern town of Malatya. They had their throats cut. The trial of their suspected killers has begun.

Also this year, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, a Christian, was shot dead outside his office in Istanbul by a young ultra-nationalist gunman.

The European Union has long complained that Turkey, an EU applicant, fails to fully protect the religious freedoms of its tiny Christian minority, which numbers barely 100,000 in a total population of nearly 75 million.

In both the Dink and the Malatya killings, Turkish media have suggested nationalist elements in the security forces may have egged on the youthful killers, or at least ignored signals that they were about to carry out their attacks.

Some Turkish nationalists fear Christian missionaries operating in Turkey pose a threat to national security.