This from The Times is the best report I have found so far of yesterday’s evidence given at the trial of the 21 July bombing attempt. I have always had a high regard for firemen, never forgetting the men and women of the NY Fire Brigade.

By the digital clock in the bottom corner of the Tube train’s CCTV camera the terror of July 21 lasted just two minutes and 12 seconds. But, for the Londoners on the Northern Line when Ramzi Mohammed allegedly detonated an explosive device in his rucksack, the events of those few minutes are indelibly imprinted on their memories.  Nadia Baro recalled to a jury yesterday how she was both screaming and crying, in fear for her life and that of her nine-month-old son.

And Angus Campbell, who has been a firefighter for 21 years, told how he remembered flinching, cowering and wanting, more than anything else, to run away.  “I was scared,” he said from the witness box at Woolwich Crown Court yesterday.  In the confusion, Mr Campbell’s training and instincts took over. He helped Mrs Baro and her son into the next carriage and turned to the would-be suicide bomber.

Mr Campbell, 41, identified the man on the Tube as Ramzi Mohammed, one of the six defendants in the dock at the 21/7 trial. There is, his lawyers confirmed, no dispute that he was the man with the explosive device in the carriage on the early afternoon of Thursday, July 21, 2005.

The camera recorded Mr Mohammed boarding the second carriage of the train at Stockwell at 12.25.09. He stood by the middle doors with his back to Mrs Baro and Mr Campbell, his rucksack just a few feet away from them.

Thirty-five seconds later he attached a snap connector to a nine-volt battery in his hand and, by means of hidden wires fed through holes in his clothing, exploded his device. Only the detonator went off.

James Boampong, a student who saw Mr Mohammed mumbling to himself before boarding the train, thought the bang was like a “very large” champagne cork shooting from a bottle. To Kate Reid, it sounded like “a huge firecracker”. Arthur Burton-Garbett, 72, likened it to a pistol shot and picked up “a very strong smell of cordite” that took him back to his National Service.

Mr Campbell remembered a loud explosion . . . The woman opposite was screaming. Mr Mohammed was shouting. There was a lot of smoke in the carriage.

“I wanted to run away but I couldn’t leave her. She was a woman with a small child. She couldn’t move the buggy.” The footage showed Mr Campbell place an arm around Mrs Baro’s shoulder and help her move backwards. His other arm was pulling the pushchair.

“It was a terrible thought that the buggy was in between him and me. I didn’t want it there.”  Typical reaction of a brave man – protect the child by putting himself between it and the danger.  He pulled the emergency alarm handle and shouted to the driver: “There’s been an explosion on the train.”

With Mrs Baro and her son in the relative safety of the front carriage Mr Campbell turned to find himself alone with Mr Mohammed.

Mr Campbell said: “I shouted at him, ‘You’re scaring us, I want to help you’. But I needed him to lie down, I wanted him to be submissive. He didn’t lie down. He became more agitated, from his body language I would say aggressive.”

As the train pulled into Oval station Mr Mohammed tried to pull the doors open. On the emergency intercom Mr Campbell was shouting “Don’t open the doors”. But they slid open and Mr Mohammed ran off.  Mr Campbell said: “I shouted: ‘Stop him’. A couple of people put their arms out but the adrenalin in him was so high, so intense.”

George Brawley a retired engineer saw the alleged bomber running at him and tried to grab his arms. He said: “I felt morally obliged to intercept him. I grabbed him by the forearms. But he broke free easily.”

A number of passengers gave chase, with Mr Burton-Garnett, an antiquarian bookseller, in the lead, shouting: “Stop that man. Get the police.”  He told the court: “He went up the escalator like an express train. I tore after him but he was about nine or ten stair treads ahead of me. Halfway up I sort of ran out of steam. I was just recovering from a gall bladder operation otherwise I think I might have been a bit faster.”  Remember, this man is 72!

The BBC has improved its video snippet of the CCTV evidence.  Follow this link, then click “WATCH” under the grainy blue photo. I believe that the defence will be that the incident was a mock up protest, not an attempt to kill. But we shall see. 

Why would somebody as big and strong as a football player carry them?  AP reports:

RALEIGH, North Carolina  — Three football players at Guilford College, a school with a Quaker background, face assault and ethnic intimidation charges after an attack on three Palestinian students, authorities said.

The victims were beaten with fists, feet and brass knuckles early Saturday by attackers who called them "terrorists" and used racial slurs, the News & Record of Greensboro reported Tuesday.

School officials believe about 12 people were involved in the altercation, Nic Brown, spokesman for the college in Greensboro, told The Associated Press. Administrators were still trying to determine whether some were fighting or trying to break it up, Brown said.

"We've had a very, very unfortunate event, unfortunate conflict among students who actually knew each other, and who had lived and interacted in the same residence hall with no conflict among themselves," Brown said.

Authorities charged Michael Bates, 19, of Reidsville, North Carolina; Michael Robert Six, 20, of Greensboro, North Carolina; and Christopher Barnette, 21, of Semora, North Carolina, with ethnic intimidation and assault and battery, according to court documents. They were released Monday on $2,000 (euro1,500) bail.

The college will allow the three to remain on campus while it conducts its own investigation, Brown said.

Barnette and Bates could not be reached Tuesday at phone listings for them. Six does not have a listed number. None of the players responded to e-mails sent to their campus accounts.

A school statement said the altercation, in a campus courtyard, lasted less than five minutes. The students involved were acquaintances without a history of conflict, and at least some of them were under the influence of alcohol, the school said.

Two of the students who were attacked, Faris Khader and Osama Sabbah, are students at Guilford. The third, Omar Awartani, is a student at North Carolina State University in Raleigh who was visiting.

"It was the most horrific experience of my life," Awartani told the News & Record. "This was a horrible, unprovoked hate crime."

Awartani said he was found to have a concussion and had trouble walking on his own for several days after the attack.

Barnette, a wide receiver, was named one of the top 20 Division III players in the nation by the American Football Coaches Association last month.

Plainly an admirable guy, but I could really, REALLY, do without this sappy hero-of-the-hour stuff.  Who started this?  It's a ***STATE OF THE UNION SPEECH***, not the Oprah damn Winfrey show.  "Baby Einstein..."?  Wha????

YNET News quotes the poison dwarf:

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.

"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

"Sparking discord among Muslims, especially between the Shiites and Sunnis, is a plot hatched by the Zionists and the US for dominating regional nations and looting their resources," Ahmadinejad added, according to the report...

The Iranian president also directly tied events in Lebanon to a wider plan aimed at Israel's destruction. He called on "regional countries" to "support the Islamic resistance of the Lebanese people and strive to enhance solidarity and unity among the different Palestinian groups in a bid to pave the ground for the undermining of the Zionist regime whose demise is, of course, imminent."

Speaking of Lebanon, what does the President plan to do when the well-neigh inevitable Hezbollah takeover occurs? What does he plan to do about the Islamization of Europe? Or the Islamization of Thailand and the rest of South Asia? How does he plan to build anti-Islamization alliances? Or does it not occur to him that we need them? If people vote democratically for Islam, Islam and more Islam, as they very well might in Lebanon if the current power sharing structure is altered, is that acceptable to us? At a time when the balance of power in the world is tipping before our eyes, why was none of this addressed in the President's speech last night?

"Hugh, what is your plan?"-- from a reader

To repeat what has been posted several hundred times, and in several dozen articles:

1) Withdraw completely from Iraq and instead of fearing whatever chaos may result from warfare between Sunni and Shi'a within Iraq, hope that such a fight is fairly even, as I think it would be despite the Shi'a advantage in population, and also hope that men, money, and matériel are sent by the co-religionists in neighboring countries, especially Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two countries that were most threatened by Saddam Hussein's regime and that were, at least initially (the Saudis are horrified at the way the Americans actually let power be transferred to the Shi'a; they never thought that would happen), pleased by his removal, and beneficiaries of it.

2) Accompany such a withdrawal by a series of measures that will show that far from this being some kind of admission of defeat, it will show instead a much harder and harsher response to the Jihad that is a duty of Muslims everywhere.

Among those measures should be the following:

a) Emphasis on the obtaining not that false goal, "energy independence," but rather the real goal of diminishing the use of oil and gas and so also diminishing the money available for the world-wide Jihad.

For that, the government should impose a constantly rising tax on gasoline and on other uses of oil creating an energy policy that will have the government spend large sums on the building of nuclear plants and subsidies for mass transit, and that will, through tax benefits, encourage hybrid cars, solar energy for homes, and wind farms.

b) Military intervention in the southern Sudan and Darfur, mainly through the destruction of the Sudanese planes and helicopters, and threats to bring the war to the government in Khartoum, through the use of several thousand men and the air force. Black African forces from mainly Christian countries could also be used. The territory taken should be held until such time as a referendum on independence from the Arabs of the north can be held.

c) New measures to end Muslim immigration.

d) Meetings of NATO to discuss future security threats that may result from a larger Muslim population within NATO countries, and ways to diminish that threat.

e) Widespread study of the texts of Islam -- Qur'an, Hadith, Sira -- by members of the military and in the upper reaches of the government, and all members of the security services (CIA, FBI) to be taught not by apologists but by those who, like some associated with this site, have no stake in making Islam palatable, but only in telling the truth about it. That textual study should be supplemented by a study of the history of Islamic Jihad-conquest, and of the subjugation of non-Muslims under Muslim rule.

f) An end to the aid, which has become nothing more than a disguised Jizyah to all Muslim polities and peoples, but mainly to Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and the "Palestinian" territories. None of these is or could ever be, given the tenets of Islam, a true friend to the United States or its people, even if the odd Western-educated leader, such as Abdullah of Jordan, may as an individual harbor pleasant memories of his stay here, but whose country is to be judged not by him and his limited power, but by the masses in that country. Make sure that a great deal of attention is focussed on the fantastic wealth of the rich Arabs, of Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar, Libya, and so on, and that the public in this country and elsewhere learns the size of the revenues from OPEC that have gone to Muslim oil states since 1973 -- about ten trillion dollars. Make clear to the former recipients of Infidel aid that they are encouraged to seek aid from those rich Arabs, those fellow members of the Umma, but that the Americans and other Infidels have expenses -- such as much greater security needs and energy projects -- that will require all of our discretionary income, and besides, those fellow members of the Umma surely will come through.

g) Support those in Kurdistan willing to fight for an independent state, offering to intervene diplomatically to ensure that Turkey does not oppose but sees the wisdom of supporting such an independent state. Assurances must be extracted from Kurdish leaders that they will never make territorial demands on Turkey, and those assurances need to be relayed to the Turkish government. In return, the United States will, alone in the area, support a free Kurdistan and will also work with the Kurds to ensure that they can make claims on the Kurdish-populated regions of both Syria and Iran.

h) Use the example of Kurdistan -- well-publicized -- to begin a campaign directed at non-Arab Muslims, such as the Berbers, to encourage them to emulate the Kurds in throwing off the Arab yoke, and make a constant theme the use of Islam as a vehicle for Arab linguistic, cultural, and political imperialism -- which, of course, it is and always has been.

i) With the potential American victims of Iranian retaliation removed from Iraq, make and execute plans to damage or destroy Iran's nuclear project. There is no need to destroy Iran's conventional forces. In fact, they should be left largely intact so as to serve as a continuing threat to the Sunnis in Iraq, and by extension, to Sunnis elsewhere. But the nuclear weapons are a threat to Infidel states and peoples, and it should not be left up to tiny Israel to deal with the matter (even if it could, which is not clear).

Measures a) through i) are just a brief list of some of things to be done initially in this war which has no end (and when Blair says it will last "a generation" and Cheney says it will last "30 or 40 years" they are both being silly; this is a war, between Islam and the rest, that has no end, that is containable but will go on forever).

The only "victory" that makes sense in Iraq is that which results in the Camp of Islam being weakened. The only way to do that is to use the pre-existing fissures, ethnic and sectarian, within Iraq, to the advantage of the world's Infidels, and the only way to take such advantage is for American troops to go rather than to stay, for a stated goal (a secure, united, even prosperous Iraq) that is not the right one, that is in fact the opposite of the right one.

The President mentioned a terrorist plot against "the tallest building on the West Coast."  Several readers clued me in.

"Derb—-In interrogating Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, architect of 9/11, he claimed that there was going to be a second wave of attacks, the Library Tower** in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower were targets.  KSM is claimed to be the uncle of Ramsy Yousef, who masterminded the '93 attack.  There is some evidence that neither one is who they say they are, and that both identities were created by Iraqi intelligence in the early 90's.  (which reads a little like a conspiracy nutball website, but is surprisingly reasonable)."

One of the lesser evils of our age is the passing of "anti-discrimination" laws by legislators in democratic countries.  These laws amount to systematic destruction of the principle of freedom of association.  While governments should of course treat all citizens impartially, legislators have no business telling citizens whom we may do business with, rent a room to, hire, fire, or engage in any other private transaction with.

These outrageous laws are an assault on private life in general, but they are most especially an assault on organized religion, as this story from England illustrates.

Thirty seconds after Webb's speech, in the first flush of enthusiasm, I spent a minute and a half, or at most two minutes, speed-typing a comment reflecting that flush. Hence not only some typographical errors are to be found, but also a few matters were overlooked in the initial haste, matters that have now been brought to my attention by – me.

Here are the few things to worry about in the list of those who opposed the Iraq War Webb refers to “the national security adviser during the Gulf War." That is a reference to Brent Scowcroft. Now Scowcroft has been a consistent apologist for, and appeaser of, assorted Muslim states, and his obvious hostility to Israel, and his failure to understand the nature of the Lesser Jihad against it, or perhaps his indifference to it, as well as his failure to comprehend Islamic triumphalism, and what the reduction of Israel to hopelessly insecure and indefensible borders would mean, or still worse, what the destruction of Israel would mean both to that triumphalism of Islam, that whetting rather than sating of appetites, and also what such treatment by the Western world, after all that has happened, of the Jewish state would mean for Western morale, or at least for those who think and who feel, are not Scowcroft’s alone – they also belong to Brzezinski, and to Buchnanan, and Lt. Gen. William Odom (ret’d.), and many others. But there is no way of telling, from that simple allusion in a list of all those who opposed – some for the wrong reasons, no doubt, the initial invasion in Iraq (it was as rational and legitimate to support the invasion of Iraq, for the reason stated, given the information made available at the  time, as it was to oppose it).

If, for any reason, Webb turns out to have a soft spot for Scowcroft, what should un-endear the latter to him, among many things, is his disgusting exploitation of his so-called “government service” by his receipt of all kinds of contracts from foreign governments, many of them Arab or Muslim, his refusal to make public the sums, and the clients, for whom he provides “expertise.” He’s an old “Kissinger Associates” exploiter of contacts, for the purposes of furthering foreign interests for pay, and Webb strikes me as someone who doesn’t care for such practices.

Furthermore, it would have been good had Webb expressed the belief that, while he opposed the war in Iraq, he did so because he had reason to believe that the information the public was given about weapons of mass destruction was untrue, but that he could understand, and find rational, those who supported that invasion in order that those weapons could be found, seized or destroyed, and weapons programs be disrupted. Had he said that, in a sentence, he would have relieved many who did support the invasion, and would also have shown that he is not, in any sense, an appeaser of Muslim states or of Islam. He might also have referred to the crazed and polypragmonic impulse that has underlain the last three years of the Iraq War, the unacceptable years, in which men, money, materiel, and morale are being squandered to do what cannot be done – to transplant real democracy, not mere head-counting, to a country suffused with Islam, a belief-system in which the legitimacy of rule is not to be located in the expressed will of mere mortals, who should be submissive slaves to Allah, but rather in the will expressed by that all-powerful, and always correct (“Allah knows best”) figure, a will expressed in Qur’an, the meaning of which is glossed by the deeds and words of Muhammad  in the Hadith and the Sira. A sentence, too, would have alluded sufficiently to that naïve enterprise: something about “an attempt to transplant the democracy of the advanced West to those whose belief-system flatly contradicts the  underlying assumptions of such democracy” would have done it.

Webb might also have had a single sentence pointing up the absurdity of ignoring, and then when it could no longer be ignored, minimizing, and then finally no longer minimizing but assuming outside Infidels could somehow limit the fissure, between Sunnis and Shi’as in (and for that matter outside) Iraq. He could have had this sentence: “perhaps the most grievous error of the Administration in Iraq was to fail to understand the depth and duration of certain fissures, both sectarian and ethnic, and to fail to grasp that its plan to overcome those fissures was not only unrealistic, given that depth and that duration, but, still worse, it is still apparently unclear to the Administration, with its naïve belief that “everyone wants freedom,” that such fissures are not only not in the end impossible to remove, but that it is not clear that their removal or diminution, if such were possible, would be desirable from our point of view.”

I understand why perhaps that last sentence cannot quite, at this point, be uttered publicly by any candidate. Too ruthless, some would think. Too unsentimental. But an intelligent candidate – that is, one who agrees with that sentiment – will work to create the conditions in which, little by little, the public will be brought to agree with, and not assume an attitude of mock dismay and horror, because it has been taught to think that right-thinking people should exhibit such dismay, and such horror.

And Webb might also have inserted a sentence to show up the sheer silliness of a vague plan that somehow is to bring “democracy” to those whose belief-system flatly contradicts the indispensable principle of democracy (locating legitimacy in the expressed will of the governed), and then to serve as a Light Unto the Muslim Nations. A moment’s thought, Webb might have added, should have led the intelligent makers of policy to realize that the removal of Saddam Hussein, followed by the “democratic process” of a vote, would inevitably lead to a transfer of power to the Shi’a, and a loss of power by the Sunnis. And that, in turn, would mean that this Light Unto the Muslim Nations would supposedly appeal to other Arab and Muslim countries, all of which  -- save that obvious exception Lebanon) are ruled by Sunnis.

I have now applied the snaffle and the bit, in order to curb what may have appeared to some to have been runaway enthusiasm. That initial enthusiasm was based on an eight-minute speech that should have been more accurately seen, by me, merely as a preliminary canter around the manège. There will be time for more considered judgement after the Three-Day Eventing.

Yes, I know that there has probably been thick snow in Canada and New England since before Christmas, but we don't get snow in SE England for very long, and not always every winter (which is why it always produces chaos, which better planning would avoid). There was a white carpet at 7am this morning, and as I type at 3pm it is all gone. But my husband made the most of our brief winter wonderland to take a couple of photos.

BARCELONA — A Moroccan man was arrested on Wednesday for alleged links to an Islamic terrorist organisation.

Abdellatif Nekkavi alleged [sic] sent cash to help the 'yihad' in Iraq.--from this news item

"Yihad"? Against, among others, "Yahudin"? This could all be put to music, if only there were a Muslim Yip Harburg. Or an Irving Berlin, composer of the songs for "Yip Yap Yaphank." But there isn't.

I hacked a hamster grave from the frozen soil in my yard.  Internment ceremony to be held this pm, when my daughter is home from school.

Out there in the subzero dawn, shabby old winter jacket thrown on, morning ablutions not yet performed, swinging away at permafrost with pick & shovel, I felt like a zek in some Solzhenitsyn story.

Readers may also remember "in Hilbertiam"

Washington Times (thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

BAGHDAD -- Four of the five Americans killed when a U.S. security company's helicopter crashed in a dangerous Sunni neighborhood in central Baghdad were shot execution style in the back of their heads, Iraqi and U.S. officials said today.
    A senior Iraqi military official said a machine gunner downed the helicopter, but a U.S. military official in Washington said there were no indications that the aircraft, owned by Blackwater USA, had been shot out of the sky.
    In Washington, a U.S. defense official said four of the five killed were shot in the back of the head but did not know whether they were still alive when they were shot. The U.S. official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
    The Iraqi official, who also declined to be identified because details had not been made public, said the four were shot in the back of the head while they were on the ground.

Samples from the Condolences folder:

Reader A: 

Sorry to hear about Hamster.  Was actually reminded by your description of these lines from Graham Greene:  "I wrote there that phrase 'in normal circumstances' because I met him first at Harry Lime's funeral. It was February, and the gravediggers had been forced to use electric drills to open the frozen ground in Vienna's Central Cemetery. It was as if even nature were doing its best to reject Lime, but we got him in at last and laid the earth back on him like bricks." 

[Me:]  Thanks a lot—now I have that wretched "Third Man" theme jangling away in my head—Dang da dang, da dang da dang (dang! dang! dang!)...

Reader B: 

[Quoting me] "Out there in the subzero dawn, shabby old winter jacket thrown on, morning ablutions not yet performed, swinging away at permafrost with pick & shovel, I felt like a zek in some Solzhenitsyn story."  You sure you're not a Calvinist or something?  Condolences to the daughter, in any case. 

[My reply:]  If it was good enough for Euler, it'd be good enough for me... if I'd been brought up with it.

Reader C: 

Condolences to Nellie.  Your full-on attention to all the appropriate actions are truly indicative of your full-on fatherhood. 

[Me:]  One does one's best.  Flattery always welcome.  

Reader D: 

I have a vision of you out back this morning in a ... zek "uni" with holes in the knees.  Makes me smile, for some inexplicable reason.  I wonder if you care more for the poor rodent's death than your daughter.  If not, condolences to her from yet another stranger... 

[Me:]  I don't much care about the rodent.  Human beings first, always.  Hearing that the prince's stables have burned down in Book 10 of the Analects, Confucius asks "Was any man hurt?"  He didn't ask about the horses.  In those days, when a horse was more valuable than a man, this was very striking.  I'm with the Master on this, and a great many other things, too.  Hamsters must shift for themselves, my job is to comfort my girl.

Reader E: 

Derb—-Your Corner item may have evoked Solzhenitsyn; but for me it evoked Akaky Akakyevich still more. I think it was the mention of the shabby overcoat that did it.  I don't know whether to offer condolences on the passing of the hamster, or furtive felicitations on now having a varmintless home.  (I'm in the midst of negotiations with my kiddos right now. Daughter has gotten the idea of a turtle in her head...but a gecko or similar would be much easier to keep it seems. Not to mention that its lifespan would be a good 40 years shorter.) 

[Me:]  This learned reader is alluding to a famous short story by the most Russian writer of them all, Nikolai Gogol.  Before reading Gogol, read Nabokov's little biography of him—the book that introduced the word poshlust to the English language. It's pure distilled Nabokov—the book begins with Gogol's death and ends with his birth (as I recall).  Lots of stuff about noses.  Anyway, I'd say nix on the gecko.  Those things can drive you up the wall.

Reader F: 

Derb—-Your house doesn't sound like a very healthy environment for hamsters. Here's hoping that other rodents don't fare any better there. There's a mouse on the loose in my kitchen - would you care to adopt it? 

[Me:]  You sure it's not a Siberian hamster?  As to the implied slur on Mrs. Derb's housewifely skills:  Remember Hilbert, a cheerful companion to me for many months, who passed away at a friend's house a couple of days into our summer vacation.  Bernadette outlived Hilbert by six months.  What was it P.J. O'Rourke said?  Something like: "Women get all the breaks.  Men's only satisfaction is, that we die first."

Reader G: 

[Quoting me]  "I shall not attempt any formal elegy..."  What are you talking about? You have a perfect line to hang the rest of an elegy on right there:  "Now I must go and hack a grave from the frozen soil..." 

[Me:]  Does sound like a Russian poem, doesn't it?  Yesenin, perhaps.

[P.S.  Not even to mention Hank's mentor, the immortal Bert Weedon.]

David Forsmark reviews Dinesh D'Souza'a The Enemy at Home at Frontpage. He ends with this:

Among D’Souza’s solutions to Muslim rage?  Conservatives should stop writing books critical of Islam, or holding “silly seminars” on whether Islam is consistent with democracy; stop discouraging the imposition of sharia law; and “level with traditional Muslims and talk sense to them.”  This, he says, will keep radical Islam from being able to recruit from within traditional Islam. “Conservatives,” he concludes, “Must strive to convince traditional Muslims that there are two Americas, and that one of these has a lot in common with them.”

Dinesh D’Souza has made arguments that, as he states proudly in the third paragraph of the book, “no one has made before.”  If you are the only person in the world who believes something, there are only two choices; you are a visionary or a fool.

TARIN KOWT, 24/01/07 - The Netherlands is considering financing a Koran school in Afghanistan. The population of Uruzgan has a need for this, according to Governor Abdul Hakim Munib.--from this news item

The school perhaps will teach that special "moderate" version of the Qur'an, that "moderate" version of the Hadith, that "moderate" version of the Sira, that Dinesh D'Souza believes are the versions available that produce those "traditional Muslims" with the traditional values so much akin to those of the "conservatives" Dinesh D'Souza descries, and so unlike those on the cultural left that Dinesh D'Souza decries.

Perhaps such a Dutch-funded Qur'anic school, with its special editions of Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, will turn out those "moderate Muslims" who are, we are told by some, not merely "part of the solution" but the "solution" to the problem of "extremists" or, as they have been identified -- last week in London for example, as "Islamists" as opposed to simple believers in Islam.

One would like to have a clear indication of exactly what texts would be used in this Dutch-funded school that would differ from the texts that, say, a Taliban-allied mosque in Quetta or Kandahar would use, and in what ways the teachings about Islam would differ from the teachings about Islam in such a Taliban-run school.

A complete list of the Qur'anic passages that will be excised, of the Hadith stories that will be excluded, of the details of Muhammad's life that will remain unknown to these students in this new, improved, Dutch-Infidel-funded school, should be set down in writing, and in great detail, by those local Muslims making this earnest request --- no request too amazing, too bizarre -- of their long-suffering apparently endlessly deep-pocketed Infidel benefactors.

They can set it down in Pashto, or whatever other local language they would like. Translators are standing by.

Derb mentioned Bert Weedon and Hank Marvin and I mentioned the guitarist they both influenced, Brian May.

This is a story from Queen and I, Brian May’s biography by Laura Jackson.

In 1992 he said of Bert Weedon, on This is your Life, “There’s about a thousand and one of us so-called guitar heros out here, who, whether we like to admit it or not, first saw live TV guitar playing by Bert Weedon . . .” A few weeks later at a ball to honour Bert Weedon he organised a band which included George Harrison, Lonnie Donegan, Bruce Welch, Joe Brown and Phil Collins who played Bert’s first hit from 1959, Guitar Boogie Shuffle. They said this was a special tribute to the man who taught the world to play the guitar.

Apparently angry with how his dinner was prepared, Imam Shuaib-ud Din on Jan. 2 punched and kicked his wife and beat her head against a freezer until the door broke, the woman alleged in a petition for a protective order.
    The next day, the imam - the recently fired religious leader of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake - threw a kitchen knife at her and threatened to kill her, according to a petition for a temporary protective order filed last week by Ayesha Siddiqa Din. --from this news item

Shuab ub-Din no doubt blamed the Infidel for all his woes. But without those Infidels living in a state of permanent fright as they would in a nice Muslim-dominated land, what's a poor infuriated Muslim to do? His wife was right there. And she's a woman, and that makes her lower down on the phylogenetic scale, though not of course as low as all Infidels. So, faute de mieux, he let her have it.

And perhaps there were extenuating circumstances. Perhaps she had just announced that she wanted to be known among Infidels by a real American name -- and had chosen "Beth."

The famous short story mentioned  below is "Shinel'" or, as it is not normally translated, but Nabokov insisted it should be, "The Greatcoat."

The word "Shinel'" alliterates with the Russian word "shurin" (brother-in-law), and in a well-known  passage in that short story about humble clerk Akaki Akakievich a list of his relatives is given who have borne the same strange name ("Akaki"), and in that deliberate demilune lunacy Gogol writes that "even his brother-in-law" -- dazhe shurin -- was named "Akaki."

In the 1920s Viktor Shklovskij, one of those Russian students of literature (literaturovedy), who were known collectively as the Russian formalists, and who were keen students of literary techniques, or "devices"(priyomy), unravelled the sleeves, and the collar, and all the rest,  of Gogol's Greatcoat with care, in an essay entitled "Kak sdelana Shinel'" (How the Greatcoat was Made). Or perhaps, better, how Gogol's Greatcoat Was Tailor-Made -- For Formalist Analysis."

Those who glance at the front page of this site, www.newenglishreview.org,  will notice several weeks ago among the new month's offerings was the promise of a piece that, for some accountable reason, like Pnin's student Ivan Dub, never materialized, though unlike Ivan, it soon will. The existing title to the still non-existent piece, "Kutuzov and the Greatcoats" deliberately avoids the word "overcoats" because of Nabokov's strictures on the correct English translation of the Russian "Shinel'."