The Bali Memorial in Horseguards London.

They say eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves. Rachel Johnson, sister of loveable mophead Boris Johnson, googled herself and didn't like what she found:

The other day I was researching a piece, right, and I went online and this website just popped up and I clicked on it - yes, I know. I’m beginning to babble like Chris Langham, trying to justify myself.

Okay, deep breath. I put my own name into Google. I admit it.

I paged through the results and something caught my eye. It was a blog written by a woman who lives near me. She was writing about me. Not in a good way.

Naturally, I was horrified, fascinated - even flattered. Until that point I had assumed that the central conceit of Tim Dowling’s very funny novel The Giles Wareing Haters’ Club, about a middle-aged hack who discovers there are whole websites devoted to tearing him to shreds, was farfetched. Now I know it is all too accurate. When it came to what’s Out There, one can only be insufficiently paranoid.

You think that's bad? I googled myself and found that I was an American actress who played "Miss Emily" Baldwin in The Waltons. "Was" is the operative word - I died two years ago at the age of ninety-five. Not for the first time, either; I had already died in 2000 in Canada, after a successful medical career . My middle name was Percy, which puts me in mind of the death notice I saw many years ago in the Bolton Evening News, and never forgot:

And the Lord, in His infinite mercy
Reached down from Heaven and took our Percy

Percy is not a sensible name, even for a man. It's something you "point at the porcelain". But I remember meeting a Canadian woman once called Percy-Anne. Is this normal over there?

Jacques Steinberg interviews Michael Savage for New Duranty:

...Mr. Savage, whose program reaches an estimated eight million listeners a week on nearly 400 stations, suggested over the summer that a group of college students on a hunger strike in support of easing immigration restrictions should “fast until they starve to death.” In October the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco, the city from which Mr. Savage often broadcasts, took the unusual step of passing a resolution condemning him for the remarks.

Then, a few weeks ago, Mr. Savage uncorked a cascade of invective about Islam. Among his on-air comments: the Koran is “a book of hate”; some Muslims, at least, “need deportation”; and adherents of Islam would do well to “take your religion and shove it up your behind” because “I’m sick of you.”

In response the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose stated mission includes correcting mischaracterizations of Islam, tore a page from the playbook of Mr. Imus’s critics. It made Mr. Savage’s comments widely available on the Internet and called on advertisers to boycott his program, which is behind only Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s in number of listeners, according to Talkers magazine, an industry publication.

At least two of his major sponsors — Citrix, which sells remote access to computers, and Trusted ID, which provides protection against identity theft — have pulled their spots. Thus far, Mr. Savage said in an interview last week, the boycott had cost his program more than a million dollars in advertising revenue committed for next year.

On Dec. 3 Mr. Savage fired back at his critics in a way Mr. Imus never did: He filed a lawsuit in United States District Court against the council, not only for taking his comments out of context — he says they were made within a broader discussion of the president of Iran — but for then making audio of them available on its Web site, cair.com.

With his suit, Mr. Savage has put himself in an odd position for someone who makes his living talking and is a fierce advocate for free speech: He is complaining about others quoting him.

But in the interview Mr. Savage contended that the council had violated the copyright protections on his broadcast by using his words, in effect, to raise money. He cited the bright orange button labeled “Donate” that appears on the council Web site just to the right of the “Action Alert” it put out against him.

“If they are trying to hang me by my own petard, they have no right to use my petard,” Mr. Savage said after Monday’s show. “It’s my petard, not theirs.”...

He also lamented that other conservative titans with microphones — Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Hannity and Bill O’Reilly — “won’t lift a finger to help me” fend off the council boycott.

That is not much of a surprise to Michael Harrison, the founder and publisher of Talkers.

“Michael Savage is one of the few high-profile conservative hosts who is politically independent and does not hesitate to criticize the superstars of the Republican movement,” he said. “As a result he is not the most popular host among his conservative peers.”

Mr. Savage agreed last week to allow a reporter to sit in on his program, but only on the condition that the reporter not reveal the location of the waterside house where he was broadcasting that day, or of two other homes where he has studios and which he treats as virtual safe houses. Mr. Savage, who is licensed to carry a pistol and does so, said the secrecy was warranted by his fears for his life, based on the sheaf of death threats he says he has received over the years...

The strength and tenacity of Islam must one day be faced, and when that day comes, the full folly of these operations to bring democracy to the Muslim masses will dawn upon the country. Then we will withdraw from both theatres and concentrate on containment instead.

WaPo: With violence on the decline in Iraq but on the upswing in Afghanistan, President Bush is facing new pressure from the U.S. military to accelerate a troop drawdown in Iraq and bulk up force levels in Afghanistan, according to senior U.S. officials.

Administration officials said the White House could start to debate the future of the American military commitment in both Iraq and Afghanistan as early as next month. Some Pentagon officials are urging a further drawdown of forces in Iraq beyond that envisioned by the White House, which is set to reduce the number of combat brigades from 20 to 15 by the end of next summer. At the same time, commanders in Afghanistan are looking for several additional battalions, helicopters and other resources to confront a resurgent Taliban movement.

Bush's decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan could heavily influence his ability to pass on to his successor stable situations in both countries, an objective his advisers describe as one of the president's paramount goals for his final year in office. They say Bush will listen closely to his military commanders on the ground before making any decisions on troops but is unlikely to do anything he believes could jeopardize recent, hard-won security improvements in Iraq.

Administration officials say the White House has become more concerned in recent months about the situation in Afghanistan, where grinding poverty, rampant corruption, poor infrastructure and the growing challenge from the Taliban are hindering U.S. stabilization efforts. Senior administration officials now believe Afghanistan may pose a greater longer-term challenge than Iraq.

"There's a real dilemma there for the U.S.," said retired Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, the former commander of U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. "In some ways, the paradox is you could make an argument that the insurgency is diminishing in Iraq and increasing in Afghanistan." ...

Boston Globe: MASON CITY, Iowa - Democrat Barack Obama yesterday confronted one of the persistent falsehoods circulating about him on the Internet - by going to church.

He attended services at the First Congregational United Church of Christ with reporters in tow, a rejoinder to the e-mailed rumors that he is a Muslim and poses a threat to the security of the United States.

Obama did not address the rumors, but described how he joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago two decades ago while working as a community organizer.

"What I found during the course of this work was, one, that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they come together and find common ground," he told the congregation.

"The other thing I discovered was that values of honesty, hard work, empathy, compassion were values that were spoken about in church . . . I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in."

If he's a Christian why doesn't he directly state his fidelity to Christ and his Word and specifically tell the world that  he is not a Muslim? Having been born to a Muslim father, he would, according to Islamic law and tradition, be a Muslim unless and until he specifically renounces that identity.  It seems as if he's trying to have it both ways. Christianity is much more than "hard work, empathy and compassion" -- that's a rowan-williams definition,  so it is to be expected that many will continue to press the issue.

Obama staffers and volunteers say they periodically encounter voters who say they cannot support Obama because he is Muslim, an assertion that has been making its way through Internet sites and blogs since he announced his candidacy for president.

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton's campaign forced the resignation of two Iowa volunteer coordinators who had forwarded e-mails that tried to tie him to Islamic jihadists.

The news from North Korea is good. It's always good (h/t Harry's Place):

Juche 96 (2007) has witnessed an efflorescence of the Juche literature and art.

The stage work "Blue Sky over My Country" (Part Dawn), which consummates the Songun literature and art, depicts on a grand epical canvas the gigantic efforts of the Korean people who are on the general march of Songun revolution toward the dawn of a great, prosperous and powerful nation, thus stirring up their revolutionary fervor.

The grand gymnastic and artistic performance "Arirang," a world famous masterpiece, was registered in the Guinness World Records to be handed down through generations as a treasure of human culture and art.

The song "The Glow over Kangson," a masterpiece of the times, was newly arranged for instrumental music and soprano trio. The song inspires all the people to live and work in the spirit of Chollima.

Chollima is a winged horse, too fast to be mounted. In North Korea, it means, in effect, building factories very quickly indeed. Such factories produce "many pink shoes to make the people happy." Sometimes they build things too quickly, for example the hotel in Pyongyang, which was meant to have five revolving restaurants, but has none. Nor does it have any guests. There's a moral there: more haste, less Chollima.

The performance of servicepersons of companies of the Korean People's Army who participated in the 31st art festival of KPA servicepersons and the10th joint performance of art groups of servicepersons' families of the KPA, which were appreciated as the paragon of the Songun culture, and the performance of the art group of employees in the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex show the high standard of art popularization in the country.

Now there's an idea for the Turner Prize.

Dozens of revolutionary poems and novels have seen the light this year...

A rather unfortunate slip.

Dozens of revolutionary poems and novels have seen the light this year which has been recorded as a year in the annals for building a great, prosperous and powerful nation. Among them there are the epics "The Supreme Commander and Comrades-in-arms", "The Land of Spring in April" and "Envy the Youth of Mt. Paektu", and "Chongsan Plain" which belong to the cycle of novels "Immortal History" and novel "Ushering in the New Day" (first volume).

Thousands of fine art works were on display at the National Fine Art Exhibition and fine art shows, enriching the treasure house of the Juche-oriented fine art.

This year artists of the Mansudae Art Studio presented Korean paintings reflecting the efforts and life of the Korean people and traditional porcelain pieces of the nation to the 10th Beijing International Art Exposition and the 2007 Northeastern China International Porcelain Fair, winning the "Ten Most Famous Artists" prize and diploma, gold prize and first prize.

At the 11th Wuqiao International Acrobatics Festival, Korean acrobats performed the aerial trapeze "Diverse Flight" and were honored with "Gold Lion Prize" Cup, the highest prize, and certificate, thus demonstrating the might of the Juche acrobatics.

Here is the Juche Tower, monument to the country's ideology:

Tacky, isn't it? The top bit looks for all the world like an ice cream cornet, strawberry flavour, perhaps.

But it isn't all fun and games in North Korea:

Kim Jong Il in the work scientifically and theoretically formulated and systematized the idea of President Kim Il Sung on obedience to socialist laws and developed it in depth as required by the Songun era, thus helping all members of society abide by the socialist laws with high revolutionary and voluntary spirit and a high sense of organization and discipline.

What do you suppose "voluntary" means in that context? Something a bit like Islam's "no compulsion", perhaps?

New Duranty: RIYADH — King Abdullah has pardoned a woman who was sentenced to 200 lashes after pressing charges against seven men who raped her, a Saudi newspaper reported Monday.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Ministry of Justice or the Ministry of Information, but the newspaper, Al Jazirah, is close to the religious establishment that controls the Justice Ministry, Reuters reported.

The case has provoked a rare and angry public debate in Saudi Arabia, leading to renewed calls for reform of the Saudi judicial system.

The rape took place a year and a half ago in Qatif, a small Shiite town in the Eastern Province, center of the Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. The woman, who has been publicly identified only as the “Qatif girl,” said she met a former boyfriend to retrieve a photograph of herself. They were sitting in a car together when seven men attacked, raping them both...

Savage is perfect for calm-everyone-down-about-Islam purposes. Why? Because his program is a scarcely endurable series of rants. This comes out, or appears to, in Jacques Steinberg's piece. And the effect is to make unwary readers think that the views expressed by Savage about Islam must be wrong, given the source, and it is CAIR that is aggrieved and has a point.

Savage expresses himself in a crude and exaggerated form, He does not discuss, does not explain, does not enlighten.  He rants and he emotes.  The same views on Islam and Muslims that, if stated in a coherent way, delivered by someone soft-spoken, and better informed than Savage is, could or would convince.

Most of his eight million listeners are true believers. They don't come to be convinced but to listen to him tell them what they already think. Despite the failure of the press, radio, and television, to supply information about Islam that might be useful -- what are the Hadith? what is the Sira? what does Sura 9 of the Qur'an say? what is Muhammad's significance? what was life for non-Muslims like in lands conquered and then ruled by Muslims? -- those events that are reported are, as they pile up,  beginning to make an impression on many others. Some of them might tune into Savage's program. And they would be so put off by his matter and manner as, in some cases, to begin to question their own questioning of Islam, and possibly even to see Islam in a less truthful, and more favorable, light.

This has happened before. Joseph McCarthy claimed to be "anti-Communist." His vicious witch-hunting led some not to become more but rather less suspicious of Communists. What was called McCarthyism, was used all over the world by Soviet agents and their collaborators, not all of them innocent, in their depictions of a crazed America on a vulgar anti-Communist warpath. McCarthy did the Soviet Union a world of good.

"My own hunch is that the next al-Qaeda strike will not be a symbolic blow to a great building or city, but rather a carefully-timed economic blow: either by cutting – or trying to cut - the oil jugular, or by trying to precipitate a run on the dollar."
-- Ambrose Evans Pritchard

The implication of the remark quoted is that the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was merely a "symbolic blow." It was not. It cost the American economy tens of billions of dollars: the destruction itself, the disruption of commerce and travel, the huge expenses for the new bureaucracy of Homeland Security. Nor is this unrecognized. Bin Laden has repeatedly talked about the economic damage he inflicted on America.

And the confused caught-in-the-headlights response to that attack, undertaken by the Bush Administration without any of its officials first acquiring a useful knowledge of Islam, and of the fissures within the Camp of Islam that could usefully be exploited, has led to even greater economic self-destruction: between one and two trillion dollars have been squandered in a policy in pursuit of goals that are both unattainable and are, in any case, the wrong goals.

This is a great old country song performed here by a string band I hadn't heard of, Whitey and Hogan.

"I'm Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail"

And who are we to argue? Actually, I don't want diversity, I want uniformity, but let's not quibble. Janet Daley writes:

The new BBC Charter resolves the insoluble dilemma of why the corporation should be treated differently from all other broadcasting companies by elevating it on to another plane entirely. You may not have been aware of this (even though you pay for it) but the BBC - rather like M&S food in those memorable TV adverts - is not just a broadcaster. In the words of its new chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, it must be much more than a mere "commissioner, producer and transmitter of wonderful programmes".

In order to justify its unique role (and its unique form of income) it should engage with licence payers as "citizens" as well as audiences. There is a new Charter commitment to "sustain citizenship and civil society", which is elaborated as "reflecting and strengthening cultural identities", as well as "promoting awareness of different cultures and alternative viewpoints".

As Sir Michael put it in a speech last month, the BBC is being "challenged to play its part in reinforcing social cohesion in an increasingly diverse society". He went on to give his personal commitment to that objective in these terms: "All of my previous work has convinced me that diversity both within and between local communities is a source of strength rather than weakness - and that the UK will become stronger the more it recognises and builds on that diversity. The BBC can and should help with this."

Whether you agree with those sentiments is neither here nor there. Who precisely is Sir Michael, not to say all those hundreds of faceless programme producers, writers and editors, to decide that the UK will become stronger if it embraces diversity? Who elected them?

Sir Michael's account of the BBC's mission is explicitly, tendentiously and presumptuously political. Whether licence fee payers believe that their country will become stronger "the more it recognises and builds on" diversity is a matter between them and their mandated government. It is entirely inappropriate for the BBC to enforce a particular systematic view of how society should develop and how, as Sir Michael himself notes, its rapidly changing structure should be addressed.

Engaging in a clash of overtly political objectives is properly the business of political parties or opposing lobby groups, not a supposedly neutral, publicly subsidised broadcaster.

If there is a case for diversity, it must be among the viewpoints of broadcasters themselves. But I doubt that was what Sir Michael had in mind.

It certainly isn't. We must all - black, white, gay, straight and transgendered - sing from the same hymn sheet. Except we can't because that will offend the Muslims.

Bernard Lewis constantly contradicts himself. At Harvard's Kennedy School, a few years ago, he noted that "reform" in the Islamic world -- not to be confused with "reform" of Islam -- took place because of what enlightened despots had achieved. And then, once the Iraq venture was underway, he co-signed (but claims he did not write) with James Woolsey an article in The Wall Street Journal about the usefulness of having such an enlightened despot in Iraq, and their suggestion was for an (unnamed) Hashemite Sunni monarch. This was merely a transparent piece of special pleading for plummy-voiced Prince Hassan of Jordan, a host and possibly friend of Lewis.

Later, he began to write about how those who denied a democratic strain in Islam were being unfair. This was not as vulgar as Bush's charge that it was "racist" to argue that Islam and democracy, as we understand that term in the advanced West, are incompatible, but unacceptable nonetheless. When Lewis confuses "democracy" with mere "consultation," and when he further ignores the question of how much "consultation" was done by the Ottoman Sultan with the heads of non-Muslim communities, or rayas -- just how much was there? -- he misuses his prestige, a prestige that in any case he, more than anyone else, has been chipping away at. Posterity will not be as kind to him as it might once have been.

And then there is Natan Sharansky, who spoke at Harvard a few weeks ago. According to reports I received, Sharansky, known for promoting to Bush, who seized on with his characteristic unquestioning enthusiasm the notion that lack of "democracy" is what ails the Islamic world (and not Islam itself) and the naive (and wrong) idea that "democracies do not make war on each other." Sharansky now insists that all along he, Sharansky, had in mind "democracy" that would not be imposed but would begin from the bottom up, beginning with the creation of a "democratic culture." There is still no hint in Sharansky's insufficiently chastened presentation that a "democratic culture" and Islam are incompatible. When he was queried about this, he did not answer the question, but simply referred to the fact that he had met, on several occasions, with Bernard Lewis, and learned what he knew about Islam, and "democracy" as a cure for the ills of Muslim polities, from Lewis.

Lewis has a lot to explain. But the podhoretzes of this world think they can continue, formulaically and without challenge, to blandly refer to Lewis as "unquestionably the world's leading (foremost, number one) historian (scholar, student) of Islam." Others allow this formula to stand unchallenged. Yet Lewis is neither a scholar of the Qur'an, or of the Shari'a, or of the doctrine of Jihad (compare what Lewis writes about Jihad, at pp.77-78 of "The Political Language of Islam," with what Armand Abel writes, as quoted in "The Legacy of Jihad"). Nor has he bothered to study the dhimmi. In his 400-page "The Middle East" he devotes exactly three paragraphs, two of them exculpatory, to the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.

Will he explain himself now? Or is he unable at this point to do so? Will he ever explain, in detail, why he was such an enthusiast for the Oslo Accords, rather than simply say, laconically, "I was mistaken"? Will he locate his mistake in the nature of Islam? Or will he say that it was Arafat's fault, or the "time was not right," or locate the problem in something other than the doctrines of Islam about Infidel nation-states on land once part of Dar al-Islam? Will he ever concede that the dreams for Iraq were both naive and sentimental? Will he ever concede that the demographic conquest of Western Europe can best be prevented by those who are not inclined to be thinking always of how to appeal to Muslim "reformers" and the Muslim-for-identification-purposes Muslims, or those who at least are worldly Western men who do not take their Islam too seriously -- the very people, in Turkey, or in Amman, or elsewhere, whom Lewis meets with, and who pay him flattering visits, and are able, as others are not, to appreciate his objets d'art, his books, his linguistic gifts, his everything?

Is it just possible that Lewis has missed something important about Islam, beginning with the need, in the formulating of Western policy to preserve and protect the West, to consider how Islam holds in thrall not the people Lewis knows, not the Ahmad Chalabis and Prince Hassans and appreciative secular thoroughly westernized Turks among Ottomanist colleagues in Istanbul, but all the hundreds of millions of Believers Bernard Lewis has never met, and chooses to overlook: the primitive masses? What moves them, and will continue to move them, and who moves them, in the end, are what count.

What an odd coincidence. My husband spent the evening with Gene Austin in the summer of 1960 at the Embers Club in Miami Beach on Gene's 60th birthday and his banjo player told him the following story. 

One time during the depression Austin received a check from ASCAP for $10,000 - a huge amount for that time. Well, Gene was a drunk, and so he disappeared with the check and no one could find him for over a month. When he finally turned up, he had spent the entire $10,000 somehow and was without a penny, but he had with him a trained bear. He had no memory of where he had been or how he had come by the bear. In that state, Austin was no povodyr'.

At his blog on NRO, David Frum offers an answer to the question about what makes Rudy Giuliani stand out as uniquely qualified among the other GOP candidates to be commander-in-chief.  (Like David, I also support Rudy.)

I will have more to say about this in a bigger piece, but I would respectfully suggest that answers can also be found by comparing the Foreign Affairs essays offered thus far by four of the top GOP candidates. (The excellent Foreign Affairs series, available on its website, presents "vision" essays from top GOP and Dem candidates.  Thus far, there hasn't been one from Thompson — I don't mean that as a knock on Fred; they do one GOP and one Dem in each bi-monthly issue and I suspect they just haven't gotten to him yet since he was not even a candidate when the series began.)

Huckabee's has deservedly been panned; Romney's is far better and merits more discussion.  I want to focus for the moment, however, on one that has escaped much attention:  McCain's — the leitmotif of which is the purported need "to restore and replenish the world's faith in our nation and our principles" — which faith he contends has been "frayed" by the Bush administration.  While the Senator gets points for standing firm on Iraq (which makes him no different from the other candidates — and on which he is no less hazy than the others on what "victory" means), much of the rest of his lengthy piece could have been written by any conventional Democrat (America needs to listen better, we need to resist "abusive tactics" in conducting interrogation, we need to add a new intelligence bureaucracy, we need to add a vast new international bureaucracy, we need to "institutionalize our cooperation [with the European Union] on climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion," etc., etc.

One illustrative contrast with Giuliani can be found on the Israeli/Palestinian issue.  Here is McCain:  

The long-elusive quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians must remain a priority.  But the goal must be a genuine peace, and so Hamas must be isolated even as the United States intensifies its commitment to finding an enduring settlement.

Here's Giuliani: 

History demonstrates that democracy usually follows good governance, not the reverse. U.S. assistance can do much to set nations on the road to democracy, but we must be realistic about how much we can accomplish alone and how long it will take to achieve lasting progress. The election of Hamas in the Palestinian-controlled territories is a case in point. The problem there is not the lack of statehood but corrupt and unaccountable governance. The Palestinian people need decent governance first, as a prerequisite for statehood. Too much emphasis has been placed on brokering negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians — negotiations that bring up the same issues again and again. It is not in the interest of the United States, at a time when it is being threatened by Islamist terrorists, to assist the creation of another state that will support terrorism. Palestinian statehood will have to be earned through sustained good governance, a clear commitment to fighting terrorism, and a willingness to live in peace with Israel.

McCain is business as usual — even though there is no good reason why the quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be a priority, much less that we should intensify our commitment to a settlement in the absence of Palestinian fitness for statehood.  Giuliani says we can talk about it after the Palestinians grow up.  That's rather a large difference, and it's far from the only one.  McCain, for example, would perpetuate the State Department way of doing things (as part of restoring our allegedly tarnished image in the world) while Giuliani argues that we need to make major changes in the State Department and Foreign Service so that they are judged by how clearly they advocate U.S. policy. 

There is a lot more to say.  But for now, I'll offer that there is nothing mystical or childish about the observation that there is plenty separating McCain and Giuliani's expressed foreign policy views — to Giuliani's credit. 

"Well, at least he [Bernard Lewis] was right on Iran."
-- from a reader responding to this post

1. So he understands, as does half the world, and hardly had to be told by Lewis, that the present Iranian rulers are not subject to the deterrence that deterred, inter alios, the Soviet rulers.

2. Is his being "right on Iran" -- i.e., understanding that the cultists who now control the country are, from our point of view, demented (even Putin picked that up from his encounter with Ahmadinejad) -- sufficient for his having been such an enthusiast for the Oslo Accords, even telling others, who presented unpleasant evidence of "Palestinian" misbehavior, to keep it quiet? Does his being "right on Iran" excuse the folly of the Iraq venture, which Lewis now blames on the execution of the plan, and not on the schemes and dreams themselves, with so much faith put in those Shi'a-in-exile who were Western men, and had forgotten, or in some cases chose to overlook, what the Iraqi masses were like?

3. Does Lewis's use of his prestige, and his connections, to keep Bat Ye'or for so long from being given a respectful hearing in Israel, something that should be overlooked? She hasn't overlooked it. What about his own private strategy, of being careful to insistently understate what was inflicted on non-Muslims under Muslim rule (compare Lewis with the admission of S. D. Goitein, in the introduction to "A Mediterranean Society," as to how much he had had to revise his long-held view of the Jizyah as a minor burden, and more generally, his -- Goitein's -- underestimate of the disabilities associated with being a dhimmi), and at times to exaggerate the claims of the "greatness" of high Islamic civilization, and his failure to acknowledge not only the exaggeration, but the role in that civilization of Christians and Jews, or of those Muslims who were a generation or two removed from being Christians and Jews but still grew up in the intellectual milieu that large numbers of both provided, despite the dominance as a political force of Islam?

You are too kind.

The disaster that faces Western Europe, and the squandering of resources in that Iraq misadventure, are such that kindness may no longer be appropriate.

La miglior foto 2007? La sposa bambina

Lo scatto del matrimonio afghano fatto da Stephanie Sinclair ha vinto tra 1230 immagini da 31 Paesi

Clicca per ingrandire

MILIONI DI SPOSE BAMBINE - Quella della bambina afgana Ghulam che posa accanto al marito Faiz Mohammed col turbante e la barba folta è l'immagine premiata dall'Unicef come la foto dell'anno 2007. Il premio va alla fotografa americana Stephanie Sinclair. «Milioni di ragazzine vengono date in spose quando sono ancora bambine, a loro viene negata per sempre la possibilità di una vita autonoma», ha detto la madrina dell'organizzazione Onu per l'infanzia, Eva Luise Koehler, durante la cerimonia di assegnazione del premio oggi a Berlino. Questo triste momento di vita dell'infelice coppia afgana fa parte di una serie di foto di matrimoni con i bambini scattate nel corso degli ultimi due anni in Afghanistan, Nepal e in Etiopia. Durante la sua permanenza in Afghanistan la 34enne fotografa freelance si è accorta che un gran numero di bambine si erano unite in matrimonio con uomini notevolmente più anziani.