Interesting news from The Telegraph.

Internal pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran to abandon his confrontational policies with the West has intensified after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme spiritual leader, snubbed a request for a meeting on the country's controversial nuclear programme.

Iran's president meets regularly with Ayatollah Khamenei, who is regarded as the guardian of the Islamic Revolution, to brief him on international and domestic political issues. But when the president requested a meeting earlier this month, the ayatollah declined.

It is the first time that he has refused to meet Mr Ahmadinejad since the former Revolutionary Guard commander was elected president in 2005 and is a further indication of the growing unrest within Iran at his hard-line policies.

"It is a clear indication that the cracks are starting to appear in the highest echelons of the Iranian regime," said a senior Bush administration official with responsibility for monitoring Iran. "If the country's leading religious figure is not talking to the political leadership then obviously something is going seriously wrong."

The words, discord and confusion spring to mind.

I'm teaching college freshmen and sophomores this semester, 80 students divided among three classes in two different schools.  A diverse and multicultural lot, they nevertheless share something in common, something besides universal ownership of cell phones. 

No, I'm not talking about their profound ignorance of American history.  That's well known, almost a cliché at this point.  I always throw out a few questions to make sure they're still pristine in their lack of historical knowledge:  What made Robert E. Lee abandon Washington, D.C. after the Army of Northern Virginia had sacked the city?  How many warships did the Saudis have to employ to end the slave trade world wide?

But worse, much worse than the blank stares and mumbled answers to those trick questions is something that separates them from previous generations of New Yorkers:  they don't know who or what their boroughs are named for (the Bronx?  Ugh?  Brooklyn? Fuggedaboutit).  Pathetic. 

I am not a fan of litigation, but I encourage these students to sue their secondary schools for educational malpractice.

"One of the really shocking things ... is the apparent speed with which young, reasonably affluent, some reasonably well-educated, British-born people were converted," police chief Ian Blair told a conference on Islamophobia.

Blair said the "extreme view of one austere strand" of Islam was proving powerful.--from this news item

Just a few questions, m'lud, of Chief Inspector Blair.

Inspector Blair, I'd like you to tell the court of Infidel public opinion your answers to the following questions.

First:

What beliefs are held by Muslim adherents of this "one austere strand" of Islam. Are they, is that "one austere strand" of Islam you refer to, part of Sunni Islam? Or might those who follow that "one austere strand" also include Shi'a Believers, such as the revered former leader, and eminent theologian (he did attain to the condition of ayatollah, after all), Ayatollah Khomeini?

Second:

What are the identifiable beliefs that characterize this "one austere strand" of Islam, beliefs that apparently are not to be found in all those other versions of Islam that apparently almost all Muslims -- save that group that belongs to that "one austere strand" -- adhere to?

Third:

What are the precise texts or parts of texts that those who preach and spread that "one austere strand" of Islam rely on? Are they passages in the accepted Qur'an? Are these certain Hadith, and if so what muhaddithin assigned a rank of authenticity, and in what collections do these hadith occur -- Bukhari, Muslim, or perhaps others less authoritative? Finally, what among the facts of Muhammad's life, his words and acts, as found in the Sira (the biography of Muhammad), inspire an emulative desire in those Muslims who follow this "one austere strand" of Islam?

Fourth:

How is it that some Muslims apparently are kept permanently from finding out about those same passages in the Qur'an, those stories in the hadith, those details of Muhammad's life in the Sira? Or do they know and merely refrain from immediately and openly acting on such knowledge, but choose to further the aims of Islam, and to fulfill the duty of Jihad, in ways less obvious, using instruments other than terrorism?

Fifth:

How should Infidels be able to detect when an outwardly peaceful Muslim means well, and permanently, and how should Infidels be expected to detect those who are merely feigning now, and even now, or later, be engaged in Jihad through collective support rather than through individual participation in violence against Infidels (both are possible, depending on the circumstances and the comparative effectiveness of various instruments of Jihad?

Sixth:

How can Infidels be certain that a particular Muslim who, by appearances, appears at this point a rather indifferent or perhaps secularized Muslim will not revert, perhaps in response to nothing more than a personal setback in his own life, which Infidels might not even be aware of, and certainly would not know what the effect might be to turn someone into a potential menace, even a murdering one?

Seventh:

Finally, how can Infidels be expected to believe not only that those called "moderate" Muslims are, in fact, unfeignedly and permanently so? We can all see for ourselves, around the world, the spectacle of so many Muslims making so many demands for alterations in the legal and political and social institutions of the Infidel lands within which they have been allowed, without any understanding or knowledge by the governments of Infidel lands, to settle, behind what they themselves have been taught to regard as enemy lines, in lands now part of the Bilad al-kufr, or Lands of the Infidels, or Dar al-Harb, the House of War, which ultimately must, like all the world, belong to Allah, and where Islam by right must dominate, and Muslims, by right, must rule. How can we believe, or be asked to believe, that the descendants of those who have already settled and presented or been described as "moderates" will through the generations necessarily follow in the "moderation" (such as it is or may be thought to be) of the first or second generation of Muslim immigrants, when all the evidence suggests the reverse, suggests that those who come after the first generation or two are much more interested in Islam, and many much more fanatical in their faith, than the original immigrants, and that faith in Islam becomes stronger and claims not a dual loyalty, but rather something worse: a single loyalty from members of the Umma, and only hostility toward the Infidel nation-state, which from the viewpoint of Islam is a hostility, not only to institutions made by mere mortals, but still worse, institutions, legal and political, that have been made by mortals who are Infidels and thus without any real authority, in the view of Allah and those who submit to his will, whatsoever.

Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed yesterday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer as reported here:

...When Blitzer asked whether the administration's credibility had been hurt by "the blunders and the failures" in Iraq, Cheney interjected: "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

In fact, Cheney said, the operation in Iraq has achieved its original mission. "What we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do," he said. "The world is much safer today because of it. There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed. His sons are dead. His government is gone."

"If he were still there today," Cheney added, "we'd have a terrible situation."

"But there is," Blitzer said.

"No, there is not," Cheney retorted. "There is not. There's problems -- ongoing problems -- but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that's been here for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off." He added: "Bottom line is that we've had enormous successes and we will continue to have enormous successes."

Cheney said Blitzer was advocating retreat. "What you're recommending, or at least what you seem to believe the right course is, is to bail out," the vice president said.

Young Muslims are to be taught Australian-friendly Islam under a government plan to stop them being influenced by extremists. An approved curriculum will be introduced at universities in an attempt to counter the teachings of controversial Muslim clerics. Phil Mercer in Sydney reports.

Suppose one were to come up with Bowdlerized versions of the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira? What Muslim would agree to have his child learn from those? The only Muslims who would do so would be those who are not Muslims at all, but essentially something else: Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims. Real Muslims would not agree. Or if forced to send their children to such schools, they would provide a little home-schooling of their own in the real Islam.

And even if the parents did not supply it, what would prevent a Muslim child, at any point, as a child or later on, from simply consulting the full text of the Qur'an, or finding a click away on-line hundreds of the most authentic -- and most menacing -- Hadith, and the full, not the carefully filletted, biography of Muhammad, with the Khaybar Oasis, and little Aisha, and Asma bint Marwan, and Abu Akaf, and the decapitation of the Banu Qurayza, and so much more?

There is no way to prevent people who call themselves Muslims and who consider themselves Muslims from finding out all about Islam. They will do so. And then they will either be horrified, and reject it, or not be horrified, and accept it, even if they may not act on what the texts teach and what can be inculcated, or self-inculcated, by reading and rereading what is apparently, to some, a mesmerizing text, an Answer to Everything, a Total Regulation of Life and Complete Explanation of the Universe.

It's all just a click away on the world-wide web. This Australian plan is silly, hopeless, mere whistling in the dark, and finally, evasion of what is going to have to be faced, just as the Czechs, in 1946, had to make certain difficult decisions, for their own future security, about the 3 million Sudeten Germans who had before the war identified with Hitler, been used by Hitler as a reason for invading Czechoslovakia, and during the war, for the most part, had not only been given preferential treatment as Volksdeutsche by the Nazi invaders, but sympathized and collaborated with those invaders.

"The French critic of Islam, teacher Robert Redeker, no longer wants to teach in school after death threats were directed at him. Redeker said on Saturday to French broadcasting that instead of teaching he will take a post in the state research institute CNRS. He agreed on that with Education Minister Gilles de Robien. In interviews he complained that the Ministry of Education had left him without help. On Saturday Redeker said further that he wasn’t sorry for his article. In the article he had called the Quran a 'book of unbelievable violence' and the Prophet Muhammad a 'merciless warmonger.'"--from this news article translated at JW

Who will hire him in this country?

I have a suggestion. Ruth Simmons, President of Brown, who received her doctorate in French, and who gives the impression of being a no-nonsense thinker, should hire him. To teach French, and possibly to be her adviser on what is wrong with American higher education. For an intelligent lycee teacher is well-placed to understand at once what is wrong.

And if she can't or won't, the first act of the next President of Harvard, if the right candidate is chosen, should be to hire Robert Redeker. Figure out afterwards what he can do, but hire him now.

Or if that is not possible, then why not one of those amply-endowed think tanks in Washington -- possibly the same one that now gives haven to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, so that from that secure forum Redeker can speak around the country on the islamization of Western Europe, and what it means for the future of the West.

Do something, somebody.

Rabbi Avi Shafran  asks: You suddenly begin noticing signs bearing Arabic script in buses. What do you do?

Well, what bus riders in Richmond, Virginia did was call the local Transit Authority to find out what it might know about the signs, which had been turning up on buses and the walls of local universities.

The Associated Press and other media outlets subtly scoffed at the concerned citizens, explaining that the Arabic phrases were in fact innocuous — translating as things like "paper or plastic?" or

"paper, scissors, rock" or "I'm a little teapot." Those translations in fact appeared at the bottom of the signs, along with admonishments like "Misunderstanding can make anything scary" or "What did you think it said?"

This is a sinister development, and it is good that it has been made the subject of such scrutiny. A systematic attempt to make us all feel guilty for worrying about -- silly us -- Islam by the obvious trick of making us appear, to ourselves, absurd for finding the very script in which so much of what menaces us is written, when of course it is also the language of daily life. But the brains of those who grow up in societies suffused with Islam, and if, furthermore, are Arabs so have no other identity to play off against Islam (as do the Berbers or Kurds), but rather an identity that reinforces the idea of Islam, then it is not silly for us, the Infidels whose legal, political, and social institutions, whose freedom of thought and expression are all threatened, whose physical survival is or could be put into question were Islam to be triumphant, say, in Western Europe, would be fools not to shudder now at the sight of a mosque, or a turbanned mullah, or a fiery Saudi sheikh delivering himself of a khutba -- or for that matter, even the sight of Arabic script on that newspaper that that man sitting next to you on the London Underground, or on the plane that has just taken off from Kennedy or Reagan, has opened and is now studying intently, and the fasten-your-seatbelt sign is still on, and you wish, you wish you had not taken this particular plane, and will continue to wish it until the plane has landed, and you are safely off, and far away from that man with his newspaper. And your fear may be unfounded, but it makes perfect sense, and is justified by all that has happened over the past few years -- justified perhaps most by your glimmer of understanding that too many, such as those described by Julia Gorin so acutely, are in cahoots to deliberately make you feel apologetic, make you feel guilty, for being rightly suspicious, rightly nervous.

And the more you know about Islam and the history of Islamic conquest and subjugation of non-Muslims, and the more you know about the behavior of Muslims around the world today (which behavior is best reported not at the so-called newspapers of record, but at this website and others akin or semi-akin to it), the more suspicious, ratonally, legitimately, suspicious you become.

Re Esmerelda's Rabbiepost:  I read then sang three Burns' poems to my intro to lit class this morning.  It took them a few stanzas to get used to the spectacle, but I think they liked it (though I demanded they take notes—and show me their notes!).  They were "Auld Lang Syne," "My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose" and this, one of my favorites from his early work:

Chorus
Green grow the rashes, O;
Green grow the rashes, O;
The sweetest hours that e'er I spend,
Are spent amang the lasses, O.

There's nought but care on ev'ry han',
In ev'ry hour that passes, O;
What signifies the life o' man,
An' 'twere na for the lasses, O.
Green grow, etc

The warly race may riches chase,
An' riches still may fly them, O;
An' tho' at last they catch them fast,
Their hearts can ne'er enjoy them, O.
Green grow, etc

But gie me a canny hour at e'en,
My arms about my Dearie, O;
An' warly cares an' warly men,
May a' gae tapsalteerie, O!
Green grow, etc

For you sae douse, ye sneer at this,
Ye're nought but senseless asses, O;
The wisest Man the warl' saw,
He dearly lov'd the lasses, O.
Green grow, etc

Auld Nature swears, the lovely Dears
Her noblest work she classes, O;
Her prentice han' she try'd on man,
An' then she made the lasses O.
Green grow, etc

From www.ElectricScotland.com

O, I do love explaining haggis to squeamish froshmores O.

Daniel Johnson in the NY Sun on the Ken Livingstone confab Esmerelda attended and reported on the other night:

Mr. Pipes had a warning for Londoners: Thanks to the multicultural policies of politicians like Mayor Livingstone, "your city is a threat to the rest of the world." He listed 15 countries in which Islamists from Britain had carried out terrorist attacks, ranging from Pakistan to America. Since last weekend he could have added a 16th — Somalia. Britain, he said, was now regarded by some experts as the biggest threat to American security.

British audiences aren't usually told this. They aren't told that "the Islamists have declared war on us," let alone have the war aim stated clearly: victory. They need to hear the likes of Daniel Pipes much more often. If the State Department won't send them over, let the think tanks do it. We want to hear them echo George Cohan's 1917 song, "Over There": "The Yanks are coming/ … We'll be over, we're coming over/ And we won't come back till it's over/ Over there."

A little enthusiastic in the coda, perhaps, but you get the idea.

This is an Open Book Examination. You may use any materials you can find, including other newspaper reports, and of course you are encouraged to use the work of genuine scholars on Islam, Iraq, the history of Sunni-Shi’a relations and of Arab Muslim relations with Kurds and other non-Arab peoples.

You may even consult with others. But the thinking, in the end, must be yours, and so must the expression, in writing, of your thoughts and analysis.

You have one week to complete this task. Examination papers are due by 5 p.m. on January 31, 2007.

_____________________________________________________________

There are two passages below. One consists of an excerpt from an interview with Vice-President Cheney, conducted and broadcast on CNN on January 24, 2007 and reported in The Bandar Beacon (Washington Post) the next day. The other consists of an excerpt from a report from Iraq in The New Duranty Times [New York Times], written the same day, January 24, 2007, and appearing in that paper on January 25, 2007.

You are asked to comment on both of these passages, and on their usefulness to an American audience in illuminating the reality of Iraq today. Discuss the ratio of fact to mere assertion contained in each. Evaluate their overall usefulness, for the public, in judging what might make sense for American national interests.

Wherever possible, be careful to analyze examples of rhetoric that you feel contribute to, or take away from, the understanding of or expression of reality in each article.

Please be careful to support all your assertions with facts. You are encouraged to apply whatever knowledge you possess of the belief-system of Islam as you understand it, and of the attitudes and atmospherics to which the teachings of Islam may naturally give rise.

You are further encouraged to apply in your answer as detailed a knowledge as you possibly can of the history of Iraq and of its sectarian and ethnic fissures, and of how those fissures arise from the nature and history of Islam. You are asked to speculate on how the further development of such fissures might contribute to, or take away from, the security of the people of the United States and of other countries in what may be called, using the term used in Islam, the Dar al-Harb, or House of War.

The more deeply your answer is based on a knowledge both of Islam’s teachings and its history, and of the history of modern Iraq itself and the relations among the varied peoples who live within the state of Iraq, the better. The more you can bring to bear such knowledge, the more likely it is that you will be able to make an intelligent assessment of the effect, both inside and outside Iraq, of the presence or withdrawal of American troops.

Be sure to write from the viewpoint of one determined to further American national interests, broadly conceived, and also to further the interests of those who, while they may differ on all sorts of matters, share the basic assumptions and hierarchy of values of what may be called the West, or Western civilization, or perhaps, even more broadly and more accurately, the non-Islamic world or Camp of the Infidels.

Here are the two passages for comment:

I. When Blitzer asked whether the administration's credibility had been hurt by "the blunders and the failures" in Iraq, Cheney interjected: "Wolf, Wolf, I simply don't accept the premise of your question. I just think it's hogwash."

In fact, Cheney said, the operation in Iraq has achieved its original mission. "What we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do," he said. "The world is much safer today because of it. There have been three national elections in Iraq. There's a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed. His sons are dead. His government is gone."

"If he were still there today," Cheney added, "we'd have a terrible situation."

"But there is," Blitzer said.

"No, there is not," Cheney retorted. "There is not. There's problems -- ongoing problems -- but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that's been here for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off." He added: "Bottom line is that we've had enormous successes and we will continue to have enormous successes."

Cheney said Blitzer was advocating retreat. "What you're recommending, or at least what you seem to believe the right course is, is to bail out," the vice president said.

______________________________________________________

II. BAGHDAD, Jan. 24 — In the battle for Baghdad, Haifa Street has changed hands so often that it has taken on the feel of a no man’s land, the deadly space between opposing trenches. On Wednesday, as American and Iraqi troops poured in, the street showed why it is such a sensitive gauge of an urban conflict marked by front lines that melt into confusion, enemies with no clear identity and allies who disappear or do not show up at all. Skip to next paragraph Readers’ Opinions Forum: The Transition in Iraq

In a miniature version of the troop increase that the United States hopes will secure the city, American soldiers and armored vehicles raced onto Haifa Street before dawn to dislodge Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias who have been battling for a stretch of ragged slums and mostly abandoned high rises. But as the sun rose, many of the Iraqi Army units who were supposed to do the actual searches of the buildings did not arrive on time, forcing the Americans to start the job on their own.

When the Iraqi units finally did show up, it was with the air of a class outing, cheering and laughing as the Americans blew locks off doors with shotguns. As the morning wore on and the troops came under fire from all directions, another apparent flaw in this strategy became clear as empty apartments became lairs for gunmen who flitted from window to window and killed at least one American soldier, with a shot to the head.

Whether the gunfire was coming from Sunni or Shiite insurgents or militia fighters or some of the Iraqi soldiers who had disappeared into the Gotham-like cityscape, no one could say.

“Who the hell is shooting at us?” shouted Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, whose platoon was jammed into a small room off an alley that was being swept by a sniper’s bullets. “Who’s shooting at us? Do we know who they are?”

Just before the platoon tossed smoke bombs and sprinted through the alley to a more secure position, Sergeant Biletski had a moment to reflect on this spot, which the United States has now fought to regain from a mysterious enemy at least three times in the past two years.

“This place is a failure,” Sergeant Biletski said. “Every time we come here, we have to come back.”...

Then the gunfire began. It would come from high rises across the street, from behind trash piles and sandbags in alleys and from so many other directions that the soldiers began to worry that the Iraqi soldiers were firing at them. Mortars started dropping from across the Tigris River, to the east, in the direction of a Shiite slum.

The only thing that was clear was that no one knew who the enemy was. “The thing is, we wear uniforms — they don’t,” said Specialist Terry Wilson.

At one point the Americans were forced to jog alongside the Strykers on Haifa Street, sheltering themselves as best they could from the gunfire. The Americans finally found the Iraqis and ended up accompanying them into an extremely dangerous and exposed warren of low-slung hovels behind the high rises as gunfire rained down.

American officers tried to persuade the Iraqi soldiers to leave the slum area for better cover, but the Iraqis refused to risk crossing a lane that was being raked by machine-gun fire. “It’s their show,” said Lt. David Stroud, adding that the Americans have orders to defer to the Iraqis in cases like this....

Read it all before answering.

The poison dwarf of Tehran recently published an open letter to President Bush.  Well, the folks at Jewcy.com have started up a project to give Li'l Squinty some of his own medicine:  "Letters to Ahmadinejad."

For me, at least, Adam White's interesting article in the Weekly Standard about the dispute between Sen. Specter and AG Gonzales about whether the Constitution guarantees habeas corpus misses a crucial point (as, for that matter, do Specter and Gonzales).

The Constitution proscribes the suspension of habeas corpus (except in cases of rebellion or invasion) but does not expressly grant it.  As Adam argues, it is indeed a fascinating and unsettled question whether this means habeas corpus is guaranteed (the Specter position) or just that the power to issue the writ cannot be taken away if a legislature empowers courts to grant it in the first place (what White takes to be the apparent Gonzales position).

To me, this academic dispute is relevant only if we are talking about a class of petitioners (such as American citizens) who are entitled to claim the protections of the Constitution.  Alien enemy combatants who have no lawful U.S. immigration status, whose only connection to the U.S. is to make war against the American people, who have not set foot inside the U.S., and who are held by the military overseas in wartime, are not entitled to American constitutional protections. 

The Constitution's habeas corpus clause is a limitation on the power of the federal government — but it cannot be invoked by someone from outside our body politic, for those within our body politic are the sole beneficiaries of such limitations.

This becomes obvious when Adam argues, with great force, that Sen. Specter is wrong when he claims the Supreme Court's Rasul case held that the Constitution gave Gitmo detainees constitutional habeas protection.  Rasul is a statutory case.  It held that Gitmo detainees had a right to habeas under the federal habeas statute, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2241, not the Constitution).  (I've discussed this before, here and here, for example.)

Obviously, if the Constitution granted alien combatants habeas, there would be no reason to rely on a statute (Congress, after all, can always amend a statute — as it did to the habeas statute when it enacted the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 — in response to Rasul).  But the petitioners had no serious argument to that effect because it is well understood (or, at least, it used to be) that constitutional protections do not extend to non-Americans outside the United States.

A reader (not, I would guess, a regular one), from the Big Easy, commenting on my offhand remarks about that dump city a couple of weeks ago:

"How dare you! You are an ignorant fascist. I will use every resource I have to spread the word about you."

[Derb]  Question for discussion:  If recording that one's first, fleeting impressions of a place were negative reveals one to be a fascist, what remarks would expose one as a communist?

No, it's all in perfect working order.

It's really crass to tell kilt jokes, especially on Burns Night. Jokes like:

Three Scotswomen are walking home at night (they are neighbours) and find a Scotsman, passed out, half under a wagon. His upper body is under the wagon and they can't see who he is; however, they would like to help him get home. The first woman looks under his kilt and says, "It's not my husband". The second woman looks under his kilt and says, “It's not my husband". The third woman looks under his kilt and says, "Why he's not even from oor village!"

There was a Scotsman and he was too drunk to walk home from the pub.  He decides to lie down on a park bench and sleep.  Tomorrow he would walk home when he was sober.  In the morning two little girls are walking past on their way to school when they see he is wearing his kilt.  One of the little girls gets curious and decides to lift up his kilt. They see he's not wearing anything under his kilt so one of the other girls takes a blue ribbon out of her hair and ties it around his thing in a nice little bow.  They put his kilt back down and go to school.  A little while later the man wakes up and nature’s calling.  He finds the nearest bush, lifts up his kilt and looks down. He says in his Scottish accent, "I don't know where ye been but I see ye won first prize."

Why does a Scotsman keep his money in his sporran? So if he gets robbed, he can enjoy it.

“What's worn under the kilt?”

“Hae a wee look, lassie.”

“It's gruesome, it's gruesome!”

”Well, hae another look, lassie, it's gruesome more...”

So I won’t.

Are we, in the TV show 24, getting our first glimpse of a Numinous Muslim stereotype?  A reader in Springfield, Va. thinks so.  Responding to some comments  I made about 24, my reader offered the following.  I reproduce it in full (if Kathryn doesn't mind) because some of his other points are interesting, too:

Dear Derb:  You are right that CAIR doesn't like 24, but if they watched it more carefully they might like it more than they do.

1. If you are doing a movie about terrorism you can substitute neo-Nazis for Arabs, as Hollywood did in translating Clear and Present Danger to the screen, but if you want to sustain a TV series for several years, and want it to appear that your show takes place on planet Earth, you must occasionally acknowledge Islamic extremism.  The system 24 has settled into is a two year rotation.  Season 1 was a deposed Balkan dictator, Season 3 was a Mexican drug cartel, and Season 5 was Russian separatists.  This is Season 6 so it is once again Islam's turn. You can set your watch by it.  Right there the producers have done CAIR a huge favor—by limiting Muslims to 50 percent of the show's run they have considerably understated the jihad's market share in the terror industry.

2.  Even in the even numbered seasons, it may be exuberant Islamic youth who are setting off nukes and shooting down planes, but the real villains are evil Western corporations with private armies of mercenaries.  The jihadis are merely tools being manipulated by Michael Moore's vision of Haliburton.

3. The most unattractive characters are always the Islamophobes, whether they are sleazy presidential advisers who want to throw away the Bill of Rights or rioting rednecks.

4.  By the same token, the most attractive characters are the Noble Muslims.  Jack Bauer may torture bad guys, and President Palmer may sanction the death of innocents, but the Noble Muslims in each season are never so morally ambiguous.  The first NM was Yussuf, the foreign agent who helped Jack fight the corporate mercenaries in Season 2 and was murdered by rioting rednecks.  In Season 4 there were the two gunshop owners who helped Jack fight off the seige by a different group of corporate mercenaries.  (At least it was a different corporation.  Some of the stuntmen were probably the same.)  This season's NM has been established already.  He is the official of the CAIR-like organization who, although falsely detained, is helping the feds gather intel on the terrorists.  SPOILER:  Other characters (including the inevitable mole(s) in CTU) will turn out to be evil, corrupt, or merely incompetent, but the detainee will remain Noble all the way to the end of the season, or until rioting rednecks kill him, whichever comes first.

[Derb]  I note in passing, based on the one episode of 24 I have so far seen, that it seems to have a Numinous Negro of its own in the person of the POTUS.  It's not Morgan Freeman, though—I guess he was booked.  I further note that if we're going to stick with properly Brookhiserian alliteration, the qualifying adjective for "Muslim" should begin with an "M."  Mystic Muslim?  Majestic Muslim?  I throw this open as a competition for readers. 

"Here is a line from Social Justice in Islam, 'In the case of the pure sciences and their applied results of all kinds, we must not hesitate to use all things in the sphere of material life; our use of them should be unhampered and unconditional, unhesitating and unimpeded.' Sounds like an endorsement of science"-- from Dinesh D'Souza's reply to a question about the view of science in Islam, put to him by Jamie Glazov

Really? Does that answer put you in mind of a Muslim Francis Crick, ir a Muslim Max Planck or Otto Loewi or a hundred thousand other students of this or that branch of science? Or are you put in mind, rather, not of those who believe that free and skeptical inquiry is essential to science, but rather of such people as Mahathir Mohamed, ranting about the "need" for the "Islamic world" to "encourage science" in order to acquire the kind of advanced technology that will enable it to possess the same kind of weaponry as the Infidels now do?

The key word in the passage Souza quotes is not "knowledge" nor the word "inquiry" nor the word "curiosity" (about the nature of life at the molecular level, or about how the brain works, or what goes on with subatomic particles, or how the universe began), but rather that single word "use":

"In the case of the pure sciences and their applied results of all kinds, we must not hesitate to use all things in the sphere of material life; our use of them should be unhampered and unconditional, unhesitating and unimpeded."

It is not the "pure sciences" standing alone that hold any interest, but rather the "pure sciences and their applied results" which we, the Muslims, "must not hesitate to use" in "the sphere of material life" and "our use of them should be unhampered and unconditional, unhesitating and unimpeded." The technological advances, including weaponry, and domestic gewgaws, that are the product of Infidel intellect life are not antipathetic to Muslims; they are happy to make "use of" these products of the Infidel world. But what leaves them disinterested is not technology but real science, and the conditions that make the enterprise of science -- free and skeptical inquiry, an attitude flatly contradicted by the habit of mental submission that Islam encourages, Islam demands.

D'Souza thinks he has successfully answered the question of "science and Islam" in his dimwitted missing-the-point response, and he dares to finish with a self-satisfied "Sounds like an endorsement of science." Only to someone who does not read carefully, and who, furthermore, confuses Science with mere Technology. His attempt at a rhetorical QED invites only mockery.

As does he, from first to last, on the subject of Islam. And anyone tempted to explain this way on the basis of some previous fondness for him, or some sort of "conservative" loyalty, should think, and re-think, the nonsense he has offered.

Nonsense, no doubt, that pleases that spider in the center of a certain philo-Islamic "conservative" web, the sinister Grover Norquist, who even now must be trying to figure out how the hell he can prevent Dinesh D'Souza from debating Robert Spencer, and thus making a real public spectacle of himself. Who to get to replace D'Souza, who will be blocked from entering into such a debate, if Norquist and the "conservative" Muslim lobby has its way? Who, indeed?

Well, why not good old Mustafa Akyol, the one who keeps insisting that everything will be fine if a billion Muslims just stop reading or even knowing about the Hadith, and the Sira, and concentrate only on that nice inoffensive Qur'an, so that "sola scriptura" will be the soothing way to liken Islam to something smacking of Calvin and Zwingli.

No doubt Norquist wishes D'Souza knew a bit more -- knew anything at all. But it's too late for that. The cat is out of the bag, or rather, the disastrous and ridicule-inviting book is out of the book-mailing-bag, and here it is, and take a look, and rub your eyes in disbelief, and try to constrain your alternating bouts of laughter and tears. At least, while you are in public.

Steve Sailer notes that the Army is relaxing parameters on the variables in its recruitment standards (but on some variables more than others, and on IQ least of all). 

"Maximum age of new enlistees has been boosted from 34 to 42..."

THAT got my attention.  You can enlist at 42?  Wow. 

A couple more wars, a couple more hikes in the enlistment age, and **I** will be able to enlist.  I wouldn't mind, and I could sure use the health insurance.

...is not New Orleans.

I fear that I owe the readers of the New English Review an apology.  I was convinced that a transcript of the debate between Ken Livingstone and Daniel Pipes would be forthcoming very quickly after the event.  A simultaneous transcript appeared on a screen by the signer for the hearing impared and video cameras and recording equipment were much in evidence. Therefore I did not take the copious longhand notes that I might have done and that is why my report centred on one or two incidents only.

Sadly I was wrong. This is all that the Mayor of London has to say on the subject. Obviously he feels that he does not want to dwell on a day when his arguements were criticised and he did not win the debate.

Robert links to the report by the New York Sun.  This is accurate, as are the accounts linked on Daniel Pipes own site here. 

But those who concoct these drowsy and syrupy fairy tales for evening escape do not feel that they have any responsibility to educating the public, even on the most serious matters.

No, it's the comforts of cliché, mental treacle, the Good Muslim Who is All Around Us If Only We Had Eyes to See, and the sentimentalism that has taken over all parts of American life, and was on display during the State of the Union Message, only this time not with a "brave Iraqi woman" (furious clapping) sitting next to Laura, but rather a lanky black African, Dikembe Mutombo (careful: it is not, pace John Derbyshire, "Matumbo," which is quite different) who has become an American citizen and basketball star whom we are to applaud for that, and for his nice smile, and for other things on that level -- as Bush the Sentimentalist points him out to the nation, and one half expected him to say "Mutombo, Come On Down!" and then, with The-Price-Is-Right music swelling, Mr. Mutombo to come racing to the podium, there to be given a tearful embrace by Our President, Taking -- as always -- a Leadership Role. First in war, First in peace, first in the soap-opera tear-ducts of his countrymen.

A reader:

"Hey Derb—-There are probably a large number of Americans who find themselves in need of new challenges and careers at mid-life.  And as the mission of the services becomes more and more holistic (don't just defeat the enemy but put him back on his feet after you have done so) their disparate experiences in the work world will be directly applicable to the expanded mission of the US Army.  To the lib media, however, the whole thing is just the desperation of the Bush administration trying to fills the ranks to fight an unpopular war."

[Derb]  There are questions of military mission philosophy to be addressed.  While there are certainly lots of useful things that fortysomething old creakers might contribute to a military endeavor, the notion that every person serving is a soldier who can fight if necessary might have to be dropped or modified.  (Possibly it already has been—I'm out of touch.)  I don't know how it is over here, but the British Army proverb is that a man loses his "bottle" [ i.e. raw physical courage] after age 35 and so isn't much use in combat. 

"Richard Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney are American patriots."
-- from a reader

Does the word "patriot" cover everything? Does it make one immune to criticism for policies that make no sense, and are based on ignorance both of Islam (and the full scope and nature of its menace and threat) and on a detailed knowledge of the attitudes of Muslims, so obviously on display in Iraq, and a knowledge of the specific history of ethnic and sectarian hostilities within Islam and especially within Iraq? Should Cheney be given a permanent pass?

Why?

And is "Richard Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney," who are "American patriots," more "American patriots" than, say, James Webb, who wants the American troops out now? Are they more "American patriots" than Tom Tancredo? Are they more "American patriots" than General John Abizaid, who will be speaking unconstrainedly soon enough? Are they more "American patriots" than I am? Why? Because Cheney served in a previous administration, then went into what is demurely called the "private sector" to make many tens of millions of dollars that he could never have made had he not first gone into "public service" and then traded on it (like Kissinger, like Clinton, like Scowcroft, like so many of the Great and Good who remain in Washington), or at the head of companies heavily dependent on government business and government goodwill, so want to hire as heads or as "consultants" those who have the contacts necessary for the pursuit of profit -- for those who hire them and, above all, for themselves.

Everyone and his brother is an "American patriot" for god's sake. Who is truly disinterested? And above all, who expresses his patriotism through fulfilling the duty of finding out about matters before making policies that depend on real, as opposed to false or non-existent or pseudo-soothing half-baked knowledge?

A real "American patriot" would stop prating and by this time have learned a thing or two about Islam, and about how to weaken the Camp of Islam. Cheney has done no such thing. Nor have many others.

Watching POTUS deliver the SOTU on FNC, I grumbled here on NER about the sappy, irrelevant (to the state of the Union) "hero of the hour" (HOTH?) segment that now seems to have entrenched itself as part of the format.  A reader blames—aaaaargh!—Ronald Reagan.

Derb:  Reagan started this, 25 years ago this month.  In January 1982 a Florida airline crashed into a bridge and river (the Potomac?) in DC, didn't get its wings de-iced enough.  A lowly postal worker, a white ethnic guy, jumped into the partly frozen river to help rescue one of the few survivors.  This was all caught on TV with dramatic pictures (a helicopter not designed for such rescues was attempting to throw life preservers into the rivers attached to lines to drag people to shore). 

Reagan had the hero sit with his wife and had him stand up.  It was part of Reagan's attempt to buck up the morale of "ordinary" Americans, and I think it worked to some degree.  It was like a scene out of a Frank Capra movie, really hit home to me, I loved it at the time and understood some of what Reagan was doing.  I was a teenager and had met Reagan in a "hand shake" line during his campaign.  In his inaugural address a year before, he had a section on "ordinary Americans" as heroes.  I think this was really in response to the "cultural despair" that the 60s Frankfurt school was pushing.  

Plus the SOTU was just coming up after the Florida Air crash, so it may have just been good timing.  For this one event, it seemed an "authentic" bit of theater.   for some time, Presidential speech writers referred to those singled out during SOTU speeches as "Lenny Skutniks" after the first such one.

[Derb]  I have always had the greatest respect for Reagan's theatrical skills (I recall some media person commenting in the obituary tributes that "you never had to tell him where to stand"), and so am reluctant to second-guess him on a stunt like that.  Perhaps it did cheer the country up.  I wish it hadn't become a permanent feature of SOTU, though.