It's a typical English Christmas - pouring with rain.

Still, have a good one. Click here for figgy pudding:

We  Wish You a Merry Christmas

Mary Christmas from Merry. And vice versa.

This is the kind of story that helps rip the mask off of the sheikhdom depicted in 1990-91 as "plucky little Kuwait," a splendid little sheikdom that was the victim of Saddam Hussein. Iraq. The Gulf War certainly made sense as far as the ruling families of Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the U.A.E., and Saudi Arabia were concerned. But did it, the original Gulf War, make sense for the long-term interests of Infidels? What if Saddam Hussein had captured and held the oil riches of Kuwait?

What then? What would Saudi Arabia have done? Saddam Hussein's army could not simply march into Saudi Arabia. The American Air Force could have destroyed it as it marched across the desert. Would Saddam Hussein have managed to appeal to the people who live in Saudi Arabia? Not to the Wahhabis, who would regard his brand of Sunni Islam -- just look at the freedoms of Iraqi women -- as far too secular. Not to the Shi'a in the Eastern Province, where the oil is produced --Saddam Hussein was the arch-enemy of the Shi'a. The Al-Saud would very likely have had to embrace, as they never really have embraced, the American government, and it would have been ready to pour out huge sums for a guarantee of protection against a more powerful, and closer, Iraq. That would have been a good thing. We want the Al-Saud to be worried. We want them to have to worry about whether or not their enemies, foreign and domestic, will be held in check by the powerful Americans. We want to force them to give us far more of their unmerited wealth, for such protection, and thereby have less to spend on mosques, madrasas, and campaigns of Da'wa.

And what would Saddam Hussein have done had Iraq been able to take over Kuwait, and make it a province of Iraq? Would he not, over the next decade, have used that wealth to try again to destroy once and for all the "Persians" of Shi'a Iran -- and would he not have been supported in such a new effort by the Saudis themselves, both because they would take his side against those "Persians" of Shi'a Iran, but because they might hope that he would once again be in an endless war with Iran, with Iraqi military might confronting the human-wave techniques of the basiji, and this would keep both Saddam Hussein, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, busy for a long time.

The American government at the time was intent on "protecting Saudi Arabia" and it saw things one-dimensionally. It could not conceive of how mischief-makers and megalomaniacs can sometimes be used, or at least not prevented from acting, in ways that, objectively, helps the Camp of the Infidels, and damages the Camp of Islam.

Having to deal with this and more.

BAIJI, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide truck bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded 80 in the northern Iraqi city of Baiji on Tuesday, the police and U.S. military said.

In the province of Diyala north of Baghdad, a suicide bomber wearing a vest packed with explosives struck a funeral in the city of Baquba, killing 10 people and wounding five, the U.S. military said. Iraqi police said the blast wounded 21 people.

New Duranty: Oscar Peterson, whose dazzling piano playing made him one of the most popular jazz artists in history, died on Sunday night at his home in Mississauga, Ontario, outside Toronto. He was 82.

The cause was kidney failure, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported. Mr. Peterson had performed publicly for a time even after a stroke he suffered in 1993 compromised movement in his left hand.

Mr. Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a piano technique that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. But rather than expand the boundaries of jazz, he used his gifts in the service of moderation and reliability, gratifying his devoted audiences whether he was playing in a trio or solo or accompanying some of the most famous names of jazz. His technical accomplishments were always evident, almost transparently so. Even at his peak, there was very little tension in his playing.

One of the most prolific major stars in jazz history, he amassed an enormous discography. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or five albums a year, toured Europe and Japan frequently and became a big draw at jazz festivals...

Mr. Peterson won eight Grammy awards, as well as almost every possible honor in the jazz world. He played alongside giants like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Nat King Cole, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald.

Here is Peterson playing Autumn Leaves. And here he is accompanying Nat King Cole on Sweet Lorain.

to all.  Two very different artists imagine the same scene.
Right the The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child by Sandro Botticelli painted about 1490 and from the National Gallery of Scotland.
Left a Nativity scene by a Birkenhead schoolgirl, from the National Museum in Liverpool.

LATimes: Meet Putin's sidewalk avengers, scruffy cheerleaders and foot soldiers. In the last few years of the powerful president's reign, tens of thousands of Russian students have joined hastily organized youth groups and headed into the streets, young people who believe that the stability of their homeland depends upon squashing political opposition and propping up their beloved father figure.

Members of Borovikov's organization are bombarded with talk of the dangers of "fascists," a term organizers throw around to refer to political rivals, including neo-Nazis and pro-democracy liberals such as former chess champion Garry Kasparov.

"We're trying to tell people about the movements that don't say they're fascist, but they are," said Borovikov, deputy head of Nashi, or Ours.

"People should understand what can happen if they support this or that political force. . . . They are fascists in disguise. We want to open their eyes."

The youth groups were formed around the spring of 2005, after the pro-democracy "color revolutions" had swept through the former Soviet bloc. In Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, street protests had pushed Kremlin-backed leaders out of power, bringing in governments that leaned toward the West.

The groups are a symptom of the times in Russia, of the peculiar buzz around Putin that is somehow both neo-Soviet and relentlessly capitalistic. Having reinvented himself, going from unknown KGB spy to revered and iconic leader, Putin is to leave the presidency in May. He has announced his willingness to serve as prime minister, and is widely expected to keep hold of his considerable power.

In Russia, they call these youths "Putin's generation": too young to remember much of Soviet times, but old enough to recoil from memories of the tumultuous Boris Yeltsin years.

"Young people identify themselves with Putin and the regime, and they don't want any changes," said Boris Dubin, senior researcher at the Levada Polling Center. "They support the interpretation of stability imposed on society by the mass media. They are shaped by the Kremlin in the form the Kremlin finds acceptable."...

The Kremlin and Nashi often try to downplay their relationship. But the youth group takes much of its funding from the Presidential Chamber, a board of hand-picked private citizens established by Putin. The group's website explains its mission as "attracting citizens and public organizations to the realization of state policy."...

Across town, in the headquarters of Young Russia, students are shooting pool and plotting their next scandal. These are young, radical Putin activists, less squeamish about getting their hands dirty than their peers in Nashi.

They've taken over a prime piece of real estate, a sprawling building that was once a bar at the edge of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University campus. "We kicked the owners out," leader Maxim Mishchenko said casually, shrugging a little. "It was a rotten joint, drunken brawls all the time."

Mishchenko doesn't mind boasting a bit about the considerable influence and wealth commanded by this fierce-eyed pack of students. Like so many shadowy figures in the noir landscape of modern Russia, his power flows from thuggery and connections. Barely out of law school, Mishchenko is expected to get a seat in parliament this coming term; he ran on the slate of a pro-Kremlin party.

When Young Russia needs money, he explains earnestly, they find some local businesspeople to shake down. If the businesspeople are sensible and pay up, Young Russia will "lobby their interests with the organs of state power," he says.

If they prove stingy, forget about it.

"We're talking here about a civilized protection racket," he says, cool as ice. "If they don't give us money, we attack them."

Attacks, he explains, entail blocking roads or holding protests outside shops until they are forced out of business.

Consequences are light: When his activists posed as reporters and assaulted the Estonian ambassador, they were hauled down to the police station. But nobody was prosecuted...

Jesus, in contrast to Muhammad, did not say: go forth and conquer in order to extend the kingdom of God and enforce God's law upon the land.

He said, "My kingdom is not of this world."

"I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly."

"I have come to free the spiritual captives."

"I have come to serve, not to be served."

Here
A highlight. And also today I want to draw attention to another group of people who deserve our thoughts this Christmas.
We have all been conscious of those who have given their lives, or who have been severely wounded, while serving with the Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The dedication of the National Armed Forces Memorial was also an occasion to remember those who have suffered while serving in these and every other place of unrest since the end of the Second World War.
For their families, Christmas will bring back sad memories, and I pray that all of you, who are missing those who are dear to you, will find strength and comfort in your families and friends.

Wouldnt Americans object to Mexicans citizens squatting in Montana and calling it a latin settlement? This is a statement of the obvious.) Whats more if there is a Palestinian State then that implies recognition of the Jewish State ( This is a key Israeli demand) therefore as the Jews have there own State they forfiet their 'right of return' to this Palestinian State.( and all other Islamic countries they have fled) In other words its a "tit for tat" workable solution. Sari Nusseibeh should be made President of PA so peace can be realised. Hugh Fitzgerald's whole rant attacking the validity of the moderate palestinian voice is a 'castle made of sand' built on a dodgy biased transcript. The moderate voices are necessary for lasting peace , you are as bad as the Islamists in trying to sideline them. As for the poisoning of wells ... fixation turns to madness!
---a reader responding to this post

This reader who is almost certain not to be with us much longer, calls my reminding visitors that Israel is entitled, under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, to keep the entire "West Bank" a rant. But Israel is not required to give up its legal claim, under the terms of that Mandate (and the Mandates of the League of Nations still in force were taken over, without change, by the United Nations at its founding). It is not required to give up its moral claim or its historic claim. It is not required to believe that the post-war settlements by which all kinds of territory has been transferred from one sovereignty to another, after every war, somehow are not to apply in the singular case of Israel. We all know how many border changes, throughout Europe, and population changes as well, occurred after World War II. But let's all recall how, after World War I, Italy was given Austria's Sudtirol region, which became part of Italy, even though its population was 96% German-speaking and considered itself to be part of Deutschtum. Do you think Italy illegitimately possesses what is now called the Alto Adige? No? Yes? Why is this case different from that of Israel?

The analogy about a "Mexican" settlement in Montana is absurd. Did the civilized nations in conclave assembled create a Mandate for Montana that specifically allotted that state's territory for the "establishment of the Mexican National home" through "close Mexican settlement on the land"? Did the Mexicans have some overwhelming claim, legal, moral, and historic, to Montana? Has the American government been waging non-stop war, diplomatic, economic, and military, against Mexico, as the Arabs have against Israel, and did the Mexicans, in a war of self-defense against an implacable foe, manage to capture the territory from the Rio Grande all the way to Montana (somewhat larger than the tiny area that constitutes the "West Bank")? The analogy doesn't hold, nor the purported argument which it accompanies.

All I can say is, this is very strange.

(IsraelNN.com) A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.

The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that "the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals." 

The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."

The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.

The paper was published by the Hebrew University's Shaine Center, based on the recommendation of a Hebrew University professors' committee headed by Dr. Zali Gurevitch.

"I do not have the entire text in front of me," Gurevitch said, when contacted by Arutz-7, "and I don't think we can jump to conclusions based on partial sentences, but I can say the following: This was a very serious paper that asked two important questions: Is the relative lack of IDF rapes a noteworthy phenomenon, and if so, why is it that there are so few IDF rapes when in similar situations around the world, rape is much more common?"...

I, of course do not dispute Israel's legal "mandate" claims , it rights over lands it won , its historical rights , its moral rights in establishing a moral society and terraforming desert to green. BUT it is the Stated policy of Israel to trade these 'rights' for peace...which would lead to a Palestinian State. --from the same reader as below

"it is the Stated policy of Israel to trade these 'rights' for peace..."

The policy makes no sense, and those who understand the texts, tenets, attitudes of Islam, and are willing to recognize rather than deny them, know that the policy makes no sense. Just because Israel has a political class far less capable than what the people of Israel need and deserve, and that political class has succumbed to pressure from outside and from within -- for it has failed to instruct its own population, and in failing to instruct, has made its own task of protecting that population more difficult -- doesn't mean that the government of Israel must stick with this ridiculous phrase, and ridiculous idea, of "trading land for peace."

It is not the victor, but the vanquished who trade land for peace. Israel needs to be reminded that it won the war in 1948. And in 1967. And in 1973. It gave up, foolishly, the entire Sinai, to a country, Egypt, that had a claim to that entire Sinai that went back only to the 1920s (surprised at that? so many people are). It gave up Gaza, or at least destroyed Jewish villages, some of which long predated the founding of the state of Israel, and all of which had a perfect legal and moral right to remain there. It now proposes to give up parts of the Arab-occupied "West Bank." These lands contain the aquifers, and lay athwart the historic invasion routes from the east, from Jordan. Such a further surrender is uncalled-for, unnecessary, suicidal. It must not take place. The government of Olmert and Haim Ramon must somehow be undone, or held in check until the next election. Israel deserves better. And so, if it knew what was good for it, does the rest of the Infidel world, whose fate is tied, but in a way that is the reverse of the way it has been led to believe, to Israel's ability to not yield to outside pressure, and not to feed Arab and Muslim triumphalism that will have obvious consequences for the Infidels of Western Europe.

"So it is perpetual conflict? Of infinite hate ? Of forever manning the barricades... waiting for the miracle ... waiting for the oil to run out? I cannot accept that!"
-- a highly revealing admission from the same reader as below

You "cannot accept that!" In other words, you simply refuse to "accept" the reality of what is contained in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. You refuse to "accept" the idea that Muslims are taught that they have a central duty to participate in the "struggle" or Jihad to spread Islam, to tear down all barriers to that spread, and then to the dominance, of Islam. You "cannot accept" the idea that Muslims might be inculcated with the notion that the main, the only real division that counts in the world is that between Believer and Infidel. You simply won't "accept" the Muslim view of Dar al-Islam as necessarily expanding at the expense of Dar al-Harb. You won't "accept" the notion that the Muslim Arabs (aided, for reasons that should be obvious, by those local Arabs who can be considered islamochristians, that is those who while nominally "Christians" are also keenly aware of the need to try to win Muslim favor, or at least avoid Muslim disfavor, and have internalized the Muslim view and promote, especially among credulous Christians in the West, the Muslim agenda, the Muslim goals. You won't "accept" the idea that the Muslims will never, can never, agree to permit an Infidel nation-state to exist indefinitely in the middle of Dar al-islam, on land that the Muslims once controlled. You won't allow yourself to think that just possibly this is not the end of the world, requiring one to engage in avoidance of this unpleasant reality. You won't allow yourself to begin to think of ways that Israel, without surrendering what it has a legal, moral, and historic right to possess, can still survive -- not by further dangerous surrenders of land and control of invasion routes and aquifers and refusing to make its own claims known to the world, and refusing to publicly raise the matter of Islam and the goals of Islam, but by intelligently refusing any more farcical "peace processing" and instead relying on the only thing that has ever kept the peace between Israel and the Arabs. And that is the Arab perception that Israel was overwhelmingly more powerful. That power must not be whittled away by succumbing to salami-like tactics, pushed by the Slow Jihadists. It must not be whittled away by an Israeli political elite that consists, so often, of people who have over time been corrupted (often by rich American "supporters of Israel" who know nothing about Islam, but presume to know what concessions Israel should make, and presume further to know all about the "legitimate rights" of the "Palestinian people"), who are mentally and emotionally exhausted, and who cannot see clearly what the real situation of Israel is, and always will be, and lack the intelligence and mental stamina to figure out what must be done, and can be done.

The Cold War lasted 70 years. It looked as if it would go on forever. Finally, the Soviet Union collapsed. It is now an unpleasant place, the Soviet Union. But it is not the threat that it once was. The Russians do not control eastern and central Europe. "World Communism" is no longer a menace. Communists exist, as do Nazis, but they do not possess the power to do damage. If Israel holds on, there are reasons to think that the Money Weapon will diminish, and many of those insisting on it may have not the slightest interest in Israel's survival, or in the menace of Islam, but will be prompted by alarm over anthropogenic climate change. There is reason to think that the entire Infidel world will have to come to its senses about Islam, and help to work to demoralize and divide the Camp of Islam, and even pick some off by appealing to the sense of grievance of non-Arab Muslims, attempting to woo them away from Islam.

That appeal can be based on two things. It can be based on a view of Islam as a vehicle for Arab imperialism, linguistic, cultural, and political and economic as well. It can be based on the fact that Infidels may grasp first, and then in showing that they grasp it, force Muslims to recognize it too, that the failures, political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral, of Muslim states and societies, in or out of Dar al-Islam, are directly connected to Islam itself, with its discouragement of independent thought, its collectivism, its inculcating a habit of mental submission.

This can be done. But you can't think in those terms. It's just too upsetting to think about the reality, and then too difficult to think -- good god, I've done the thinking for you, in a thousand postings on this very subject -- about how the principle of "Darura" or "necessity" may be invoked by the rulers in the circumjacent Arab Muslim states to excuse their failure to attack Israel.

No. You just are going to stomp your foot and say, about the doctrine of permanent Jihad, that "I cannot accept that."

You remind me of Margaret Fuller, the Transcendentalist of Concord, who was reported to have said "I accept the universe!" Hearing this, Carlyle said (perhaps to Emerson, whom he met), "By gad, she'd better."

By gad, you'd better accept the reality of Islam, and the doctrine of Jihad. And so should those who presume to instruct and protect the people of Israel.

Claire Berlinski dissects Orhan Pamuk in The Globe & Mail (hat tip: Arts & Letters):

The novels of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most celebrated and controversial man of letters, have been translated into some 20 languages. His novels Snow and My Name is Red are widely considered world-class achievements. The themes of Pamuk's oeuvre include the conflict between the East and the West, the tension between Islam and modernity, and the intense melancholia of his native Istanbul. Admirers find his style complex, multilayered and allegorical; detractors find him faddish and incomprehensible.

On Sept. 11, 2001, writers treating the themes of East contra West and Islam contra modernity hit the literary jackpot. Pamuk - Eastern enough to write novels about Ottoman calligraphers and Islamic radicals, Western enough to write them in a postmodern, magic-realist style - became the darling of the Western literary establishment, serially winning the most prestigious and lucrative literary awards in the Western world: the IMPAC Dublin Award, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Prix Médicis étranger, the Premio Grinzane Cavour.

Then, in 2005, Pamuk remarked to a Swiss weekly newsmagazine that "thirty thousand Kurds, and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody dares to talk about it." By "these lands" he meant Turkey. By "nobody," it is not quite clear what he meant; as far as I can tell - and I live in Turkey myself - nobody here will stop talking about it. But the sentiment in Turkey, generally speaking, is that the Armenians had it coming, and quite a few more Kurds want killing.

Pamuk seemed to be suggesting otherwise. The Turkish government brought criminal charges against him under the infamous Article 301, which forbids citizens from insulting Turkishness. Pamuk was in one stroke elevated from symbolist writer to symbol. The European Union's Enlargement Commissioner called Pamuk's case a "litmus test" of Turkey's commitment to European values; writers around the world rightly denounced the charges as an outrage against free expression. In the end, the case was dropped on a technicality.

Facing death threats at home, Pamuk sensibly decamped for New York. But his prosecution, combined with his status as ambassador at large for the westernized Islamic world, functioned like camembert in a mousetrap to the Nobel committee, which in 2006 awarded him the Nobel Prize for literature. Pamuk is a talented writer, but no one in his right mind believes this was an award based on literary merit.

Pamuk has for the past three decades been filling his notebooks with sketches, half-finished short stories, thoughts about literature and reflections on the travails of life as a writer and a Turk. He has compiled them, loosely edited, into Other Colors, "a book made of ideas, images and fragments of life that have still not found the way into one of my novels." Although it contains previously published works, such as his Nobel acceptance speech and the transcripts of various interviews he has granted over the years, it is mostly comprised of non-fiction essays written some years ago but only now seeing the light of day: literary criticism, reminiscences of his boyhood and particularly of his father, reflections on the challenges of quitting smoking, a discussion of his wristwatches, two short meditations on seagulls and their sad fates, ruminations on the pathos of being a Turk and the Turk's endless, resentful fascination with Europe. There are more descriptions of Istanbul in the melancholy vein of his previous memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City.

But this book is about Pamuk himself, particularly the challenges of being a great writer and a severe depressive. The collection has been received with rapture by many critics, who celebrate this offering as a unique window into Pamuk's interior life. Indeed, it is precisely that. Unfortunately, it seems that Pamuk's interior life is largely that of a lugubrious poseur.

"In order to be happy I must have my daily dose of literature," Pamuk gravely introduces himself. "In this way I am no different from the patient who must take a spoon of medicine each day." If you didn't quite get the point, he repeats it again two sentences later: "For me, literature is medicine. Like the medicine that others take by spoon or injection, my daily dose of literature - my daily fix, if you will - must meet certain standards." If he is forced "to go a long stretch without his paper-and-ink cure," he feels "misery setting inside me like cement. My body has difficulty moving, my joints get stiff, my head turns to stone, my perspiration even seems to smell differently."

Is he serious? Yes, he is. For page upon page, Pamuk stresses in these self-enamoured tones that he is a man who really likes to read books. Good ones, too, by famous writers like Dostoyevsky and Borges - not, you know, easy ones. He's different from other Turks, you see. But he's not like the Europeans, either. He's an outsider, eternally apart, rejected by all, accepted by no one (the Nobel committee aside). Life hurts. A seagull croaks...

The rest is here.