This news, from the Daily Mail, fills out the story Mary posted on earlier.  It likely will make our friendly neighborhood math lover apoplectic (h/t Gates of Vienna):

In maths and science, key Muslim contributions such algebra and the number zero will be emphasised to counter Islamophobia.

Q.  How many infidels does it take to screw in a light bulb? 

A.  Zero.

Found at the home of one of the men on trial for attempted murder after the failed bombimgs of 21 July 2005 were various DVDs, speeches by Osama bin Laden, books and suchlike, including a video called Islam - The Only Solution To World Peace.

David Bell does not deserve ferocious criticism. His piece simply has the wrong emphasis, and lends itself to dangerous misunderstanding.. He should have said that terrorism is not the main worry; the other instruments of Jihad are more dangerous because more effective and less noticed. A response that is entirely military, and that furthermore is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of Islam, so that the "war on terror" (cf. Jimmy Durante and Irving Berlin at a War Bonds Rally, circa 1943, asking people to contribute to "a war against the Blitzkrieg") and not the war of self-defense against the Jihad and all of its instruments, becomes the only war in town.

Besides, one should cut Bell some slack. He did a good job on the Napoleonic poseur, now much diminished or ridimensionato, Dominique de Villepin, in The New Republic. And his mother, Pearl Bell, used to write good book reviews for The New Leader, a magazine which, like "The Progressive" under Max Ascoli, was implacably and intelligent anti-Communist, much more than The New Republic under Michael Straight, and unlike their supposed avatars today, the writers for those magazines would, were they alive today, have had little trouble recognizing Islam for what it is. They had lived through a lot. They had lived through the war, and some had been refugees from the Nazis. They knew some history. They were not foolable and certainly not inclined to be impressed by, much less offer automatic respect to, anything bearing the word "religion." They were in the same boat, more or less, as Oriana Fallaci, rather than in the current galere. But even in that sinking ship of state some may be both bailing out, and bailing, just in time, so that the motto of Paris (quondam Lutetia) can become that of the entire Western world:  Fluctuat nec mergitur.

From the MEMRI Blog today:

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei met with Russian Security Council Secretary Igor Ivanov. During the meeting, Ivanov delivered a letter to the Iranian leadership from Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which Putin stressed Russia's adherence to continued cooperation with Iran in completing the nuclear facility at Bushehr.

I’m glad I was never a student at Brandeis University when Herbert Marcuse taught there. Marcuse dedicated an essay to his students, and I don’t understand it, so I would not have been in a position to thank him for it. It isn’t written in postmodernist jargon or in a difficult foreign language, but it makes my brain ache and my heart sink trying to read it. Perhaps I’m just intolerant. But perhaps this is a good thing, as tolerance may be repressive:

The author is fully aware that, at present, no power, no authority, no government exists which would translate liberating tolerance into practice, but he believes that it is the task and duty of the intellectual to recall and preserve historical possibilities which seem to have become utopian possibilities--that it is his task to break the concreteness of oppression in order to open the mental space in which this society can be recognized as what it is and does.

Is “the author” writing about himself in the third person so he can call himself an “intellectual” without appearing to boast? And if you break the “concreteness” of something, do you find a “mental space” in it?

Tolerance is an end in itself. The elimination of violence, and the reduction of suppression to the extent required for protecting man and animals from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane society. Such a society does not yet exist; progress toward it is perhaps more than before arrested by violence and suppression on a global scale. As deterrents against nuclear war, as police action against subversion, as technical aid in the fight against imperialism and communism, as methods of pacification in neo-colonial massacres, violence and suppression are promulgated, practiced, and defended by democratic and authoritarian governments alike, and the people subjected to these governments are educated to sustain such practices as necessary for the preservation of the status quo. Tolerance is extended to policies, conditions, and modes of behavior which should not be tolerated because they are impeding, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery.

What are the chances of creating an existence without fear and misery? I’d say about zero. And would we really want one?

What has he got to say about art?

Art stands against history, withstands history which has been the history of oppression, for art subjects reality to laws other than the established ones: to the laws of the Form which creates a different reality--negation of the established one even where art depicts the established reality. But in its struggle with history, art subjects itself to history: history enters the definition of art and enters into the distinction between art and pseudo-art. Thus it happens that what was once art becomes pseudo-art. Previous forms, styles, and qualities, previous modes of protest and refusal cannot be recaptured in or against a different society. There are cases where an authentic oeuvre carries a regressive political message--Dostoevski is a case in point. But then, the message is canceled by the oeuvre itself: the regressive political content is absorbed, aufgehoben in the artistic form: in the work as literature.

Marcuse likes a struggle – his type always do:

The alternative to the established semi-democratic process is not a dictatorship or elite, no matter how intellectual and intelligent, but the struggle for a real democracy. Part of this struggle is the fight against an ideology of tolerance which, in reality, favors and fortifies the conservation of the status quo of inequality and discrimination. For this struggle, I proposed the practice of discriminating tolerance. To be sure, this practice already presupposes the radical goal which it seeks to achieve. I committed this petitio principii in order to combat the pernicious ideology that tolerance is already institutionalized in this society. The tolerance which is the life element, the token of a free society, will never be the gift of the powers that be; it can, under the prevailing conditions of tyranny by the majority, only be won in the sustained effort of radical minorities, willing to break this tyranny and to work for the emergence of a free and sovereign majority - minorities intolerant, militantly intolerant and disobedient to the rules of behavior which tolerate destruction and suppression.

If he was so keen on struggling, how could he have wanted "an existence free from fear or misery"? Wouldn't he have got bored?

Donna Abu-Nasr writes at AP:

QATIF, Saudi Arabia -- Like many Saudi Shi'ites, Abdullah Abdul-Hussein is worried that if the government does not end anti-Shi'ite tirades by influential Sunni clerics, the sectarian conflict ravaging Iraq and threatening Lebanon could spread to his country.

"This rhetoric provokes trouble," said Abdul-Hussein, referring to recent statements from key members in Saudi Arabia's clerical establishment that have urged Sunnis around the world to expel Shi'ites from their lands.

"We are all citizens of the same country. The government should not allow such excess," said the 37-year-old merchant, expressing a worry shared by many in this mainly Shi'ite town.

Fears of sectarian tensions go beyond this sleepy oasis in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, where the kingdom's Shi'ite minority is centered. The bloodshed in Iraq and turmoil in Lebanon have enflamed the Shi'ite-Sunni divide across the Middle East and in much of the Islamic world.

The tensions are more palpable as Shi'ites mark Ashoura, one of their holiest days, today . It commemorates the seventh-century death of Imam Hussein in a battle with the leaders of what would become the mainstream Sunni branch of Islam. His death began the schism between Sunnis and Shi'ites...

Was 9/11 really that bad? The attacks were a horrible act of mass murder, but history says we're overreacting. --David A. Bell

Apparently the author, though having nothing piercingly original to offer, nonetheless felt he had to have his say on the Pressing Matter of the Day, and did so. He contented himself with the banal observation that what we see before us -- the entire Baby-Huey operation of "boots on the ground" in Iraq, determined to prevent those very fissures, sectarian and ethnic, we should welcome, (and Afghanistan, sweeping back the Muslim tide)-- is an "overreaction."

He did not wait to find the right word: it is not an "overreaction" but a misguided reaction. It is a reaction of the kind that will come if we persist, like Bush (or like David Bell) think that this is a "war on terrorism" -- in which case there is no need even to begin to think of all the other instruments of Jihad, the more effective and dangerous instruments, such as the money weapon, Da'wa, and demography, for if Jihad proceeds with instruments other than terror, and Infidels are only engaged in a "war on terror," then we should be content with any analysis that focuses on that, and so the disagreement between the Bush Administration and David Bell is merely over the size of that "terror" threat, and the proper size of our military and security steps to meet that "threat."

Nothing here about the islamization of Europe. Nothing here about the systematic long-term attacks on Christians in Indonesia (thousands of churches destroyed in 2003 alone), on Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir, and deep into India. Nothing here about attacks on Christians over the past few decades in Nigeria (the Jihad that Col. Ojukwu, head of Biafra, was fighting against), nor in southern Sudan, nor within a great number of sub-Saharan countries. Nothing about the world-wide activities of the World Muslim Congress, the financing of mosques and madrassas, for which the Saudis have spent $100 billion (the Soviet Union, in all the years of its existence, never spent abroad on pro-Soviet propaganda and agents more than $10 billion) in the last two decades, nothing about the takeover of academic departments, or at least the use of Arab money to endow Centers (Durham, Exeter, Georgetown), or expensively-upholstered chairs (University of California, Harvard Law School, and a great many other places), where the King Abdul Aziz this, and the Guardian of the Two Holy Places that, can make sure that neither they, nor the successors they choose, ever enlighten the students about Islam (thus, for example, does Frank Vogel help pick, with a little help from Roy Mottahedeh and John Esposito, Noah "After Jihad" Feldman to continue to misinform Harvard Law students about Islam, providing a guide to nothing and to nowhere, for the next 35 years -- but how would the faculty members, innocent of Islam, and of what is going on in the field, be aware of that until long after Feldman arrives, trailing clouds of glory?).

Perhaps David Bell is merely disturbed at the colossal waste, the squandering in Iraq, of men's lives, of vast sums of money ($700 billion in past and committed future costs), in war matériel, in damage to American morale, military as well as civilian -- all to pursue a will-o'-the-wisp of "freedom" and "democracy" in a united, stable, prosperous Iraq that will be a Light Unto the (Sunni Arab) Muslim Nations. That, readers of this site understand, is a goal that is both impossible, and is exactly the wrong goal.

He might merely have written: a response that is purely military, based on a misunderstanding of the nature and scope of the menace, is the wrong response and the wrong type of response, insufficiently various, effective, ruthless, and cunning. For that menace, David Bell might have referred readers to others: See, for example, Bat Ye'or, Oriana Fallaci, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Magdi Allam, Anne-Marie Delcambre, Alain Finkielkraut, Alain Besancon, Ali Sina, Bassam Tibi, Wafa Sultan, and a thousand others, not one of whom, I suspect, David Bell has yet read, digested, or thoroughly assimilated.

AMT members endorsing this statement [supporting Al-Arian] include: American Muslim Alliance (AMA), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim American Society (MAS), Muslim Student Association-National (MSA-N), Muslim Ummah of North America (MUNA), Project Islamic Hope (PIH), and United Muslims of America (UMA) --from Rebecca's post below

These are groups akin to the German-American Bund of Fritz Kuhn in their attitudes, and in their support for the enemy in what is, or should be, recognized as wartime. After all, in Islam it is always war-time: the division of the world between Believer and Infidel makes for a permanent state of war with all inhabitants of Dar al-Harb, and while fighting may not always be constant, that State of War is indeed forever, until all obstacles to the spread of Islam are removed, and until Islam everywhere dominates -- for "Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated" (also sprach Muhammad)--and Muslims rule, everywhere.

These Muslim groups identify with, and support, known enemies, known participants in Jihad. The Jihad in Sami al-Arian's case happens to have been mainly the Lesser Jihad against Israel, but no one should doubt that if given half a chance he would work tirelessly in order to further the islamization of Western Europe, or to expand the presence and power of Islam in this country, so as to look forward to the day when Islam prevails, and of course everywhere else in the world -- in Kashmir, in southern Thailand, in southern Sudan and Darfur, one should have no doubt where Sami al-Arian and his Arab supporters stand -- they stand with the forces of Islam, or in the case of Darfur, just like all the Arab states, foursquare with the Arabs mass-murderers of non-Arab Muslims, as they would with the Arabs who mass-murdered the Kurds, or deny the Berbers their linguistic and cultural rights, in North Africa.

These organizations need to be penetrated, and a book needs to be written -- many books -- about their schemes and dreams and what moves them, what they say and think behind closed doors, when the Infidels are not, they think, listening ("War is deception" said Muhammad). In the middle of World War II, John Roy Carlson performed such undercover work and wrote about it. His book, "Under Cover," went through 20, 30, 40 printings -- and exposed Fritz Kuhn's Bund, and William Pellley's Silver Shirts, and all the other pro-Nazi and pro-Axis groups, working so sinisterly, as best they could, to undermine their own country's war effort and its political and legal institutions.

There is no difference now. See the names of those organizations. Think of them as Fritz Kuhn's Bund. For their function and role are exactly the same.

Speaking of FOG (friends of Grover), here is the latest press release from CAIR concerning the plight of Sami Al Arian, former professor at the University of South Florida who also happened to run an outlet for Palestinian Islamic Jihad from his office. Thanks to Jeffrey Imm.

National Islamic Coalition Seeks End to 'Harassment' of Florida Professor

    WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Muslim
Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), a national coalition of
major American Muslim organizations, today said the new prison sentence
given to former Florida professor Sami Al-Arian amounted to
unconstitutional "double jeopardy."
    Al-Arian recently began a hunger strike after being given a sentence of
up to 18 months for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Virginia. He
and his attorney say an early plea agreement freed him from further
cooperation with the government. Al-Arian's supporters say he is being held
in a rat and cockroach-infested prison and is being forced to wear dirty
and inadequate clothing as a form of harassment.
    In 2005, a Florida jury rejected federal charges that Al-Arian operated
a cell for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian later pleaded guilty to
a lesser charge and was scheduled for release and deportation in April.
In a statement, the AMT said:
    "It is becoming increasingly clear that the government is seeking to
impose legal and physical penalties on Dr. Al-Arian that it could not
obtain through the judicial process. The government's actions amount to an
unconstitutional 'double jeopardy' situation in which a person who was
cleared of all charges by a jury of his peers is nonetheless being
imprisoned in harsh conditions through administrative means.
    "We call on all fair-minded Americans who care about the preservation
of the integrity of our nation's legal system to speak out about this
apparent abuse of prosecutorial power. We also call on federal authorities
to cease their harassment of Dr. Al-Arian and to release him as scheduled
so that he and his family can resume their lives in another country."
    AMT members endorsing this statement include: American Muslim Alliance
(AMA), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of
North America (ICNA), Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), Muslim
American Society (MAS), Muslim Student Association-National (MSA-N), Muslim
Ummah of North America (MUNA), Project Islamic Hope (PIH), and United
Muslims of America (UMA)

Luke, in the comments to my post on diversity, has this to say:

The right-on literary establishment's treatment of VS Naipaul is nothing short of a philistine disgrace.

Never mind his more 'controversial' later books.

'A House for Mr Biswas' is one of the greatest post-war English language novels and knocks most British black / Asian writers into irrelevance. Monica Ali's Brick Lane owes a large debt to A House for Mr Biswas. Although it is, as these things always are, inferior.

Never mind The Enigma of Arrival or any of Naipaul's amazingly prescient works on Islam, books that identified, examined and dissected all that is happening in our world today over 25 years ago (Among the Believers came out in the early 1980's, and 'Beyond Belief', an even more vital work focussing on how Islam is little more than Arab imperialism, was published in the late 1990's.)

Suhail Khan, son of Mahboob Khan. And the whole thing sponsored by CPAC, not all of whose members may be aware of Grover Norquist's many activities on behalf of Islam and of Muslims, and his founding of the Islamic Institute. There's a lot to know about Grover Norquist, and the members of CPAC ought to know it, and act on it -- his continued presence, and the sullying of CPAC's reputation and hence its diminished usefulness (which is now apparent, and will be more so when Karl Rove leaves), should not be tolerated. Not in wartime. And this is wartime, and there must be people connected to CPAC who understand this, or if they don't, are aware that a great many "conservatives" take a very dim view of Grover Norquist, and his companions, and who and what influence him, and who, and what, he influences.

Here's an an excert from an article on Norquist, which deserves to be read in its entirety:

A TROUBLING INFLUENCE by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

Penetrating the White House

Suhail Khan was one of at least three Muslim outreach gatekeepers at the White House with whom Norquist has been associated over the years. I became aware of the intensity of the attachment when Norquist verbally assaulted me one day in the hallway outside our offices with the accusation that I had been calling Khan a terrorist. I assured him that I had done no such thing. Evidently, somebody else, though, had stumbled onto the fact that Khan's late father, Mahboob Khan, was a prominent figure in the Islamist enterprise in America. It turns out that, among other things, he was the founder of a large Wahhabi center, mosque and school in Orange County, California. 29

The New York Times revealed on October 23, 2001, that, in that capacity, Khan Sr. had hosted Ayman al-Zawahiri, reportedly Osama bin Laden's right-hand-man in the al-Qaeda organization - not once, but twice in the 1990s.30 The first time, Zawahiri came under his own name, the second time he used an alias. In the course of his trips, the terrorist chief reportedly not only raised funds for al-Qaeda's operations at Khan's mosque but also purchased satellite communications equipment while in the United States.31

After Khan's family ties to terror became a focus of press attention, Suhail left the White House staff to go to work at the Department of Transportation. Grover Norquist closed a Wednesday Group meeting by tearfully apologizing to Suhail Khan for the injury caused him by "racists and bigots" and, by example, encouraging the assembled company to join him in a standing ovation to Khan. Most hadn't a clue what he was talking about but went along. Mindful that Norquist had me in mind, I sat it out.

If White House security procedures had worked across the board as they were supposed to, it seems unlikely that President Bush and his senior subordinates would ever have met with some of those sponsored by Norquist and Saffuri. Sami al-Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi, for example, would probably never have gotten inside the White House compound.

What happened at the Wednesday Group meeting after Khan's move to Transportation was unfortunately not an isolated incident, but part of an already established pattern. In July 2001, the Secret Service evicted Sami al-Arian's son, Abdullah, from a meeting in the White House. The President had affably dubbed Abdullah "Big Dude" after first meeting him and his family on the campaign trail in Florida in March 2000.32 Evidently, the Service acted on the basis of the law enforcement community's longstanding suspicion of the father's ties to international terror.

Norquist's friends immediately raised a ruckus. Other participants in the meeting walked out in solidarity. It became a cause celebre, trumpeted as an egregious example of the racial profiling about which the Islamists and their leftwing allies incessantly complained. In short order, the Deputy Director of the Secret Service was obliged to issue a written apology to "Big Dude" al-Arian. And the President himself personally called the evictee's mother to express regret and to assure her that no such thing would be allowed to happen again...

No, this post has nothing to do with Viagra. From The Telegraph:

Floppy, we hardly knew you. It was only in 1971 that the first commercial floppy disk went on sale; now PC World has decided to discontinue them. It's the end.

So the floppy disk joins space hoppers, propelling pencils, the Stylophone, Robin starch, toasting forks, Party Sevens, gold top milk, Tizer, fly-buttons, blue twists of salt in packets of crisps, nylon shirts, Spangles, shove-halfpenny, Izal lavatory paper and the Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley Pen.

No, the future's not floppy. But, although a single memory stick can now hold 6,000 times the information on a floppy disk, we shall miss one glorious anomaly: floppy disks, despite their precise dimension of 9cm in diameter, were denominated all over the world according to imperial measure – 3½in. That apart, the floppy disk has outlived its early promise and proved, well, a bit of a flop.

My PC, a dinosaur at three years old, has a floppy disk drive, but no memory stick slot. I'm going to have to get one, or maybe one of those Swiss army knife things Robert was talking about the other day.

The problem with the floppy disks was that they weren't floppy enough. If they got stuck in the disk drive you couldn't make them bend and pop out - they were rigid and needed to be skewered by poking a sharp implement into the slot. A toasting fork would be ideal, except you can't get them anymore (see above). Then the innards of your machine would be damaged.

I think it's a shame that we don't have toasting forks, Spangles, spacehoppers, or propelling pencils anymore, but who regrets the passing of the Stylophone? And, on the subject of passing, what is, or was, Izal lavatory paper?

Yes, we don't need to parrot Islamic propaganda.  Islam itself provides reasons enough to slay infidels.

Still, there is France—and French foreign policy vis a vis the Arab world, specifically, Qadafi, Arafat, and Saddam for starters.  They are part of the West, are not the French?   

Retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander M. Zhudi Jasser refreshingly writes in NRO today:  "To this point, the Muslim community has been able to completely avoid any real debate over Islamism. In fact, we see now a movement in England and the West to blame the West’s foreign policy as a root cause of terror rather than the real root cause — theocratic Islamist ideology."

I wanted to cheer until I realized that Lt. Commander Jasser, a Muslim and the head of an organization called the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, obviously has missed Dinesh D'Souza's explanation that Islamic terror really has nothing to do with Islam — it's all the fault of Lefty permissiveness and those crazy right-wing Islamophobes who upset everyone by suggesting that Islamic terrorism maybe, just maybe, might be caused by Islamic theology.  Imagine claiming that scriptural commands to kill the infidels might inspire some believers to think they're supposed to kill the infidels?  What a nutty argument!

Attempts to indoctrinate children in the classroom are likely to backfire, argues Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times:

An English teacher of mine once devoted an entire lesson to expounding his fervently held thesis that Pakistanis were devious, smelt bad and should be kicked out of the country. As none of us liked this particular teacher, thinking him a lazy oaf, we naturally assumed that precisely the reverse was true, and resolved to make friends with the first Pakistanis we came across.

This was an excellent example of political propaganda in the classroom falling at the first hurdle. Thirty years later, I hope today’s kids react with similar perverse disdain when subjected to the government’s attempts to wash their brains. They should do what we did: snigger, heckle, make obscene up-and-down gestures with their hands to the teacher and then forget it the moment the bell sounds.

A paper commissioned by Alan Johnson, the education secretary, has recommended children be taught the immense benefits of multiculturalism and diversity in every subject they study. The paper, written by some superannuated educational panjandrum called Sir Keith Ajegbo, suggests, for example, that during maths lessons children should be told that Muslims invented nothing. By which I mean that they invented the concept of zero. So when a quadratic equation resolves to zero, the kids should be reminded that, in effect, Allah (PBUH) provided us with this wonderful conclusion.

In history the kids should be told that they’re all from immigrant communities, and in English classes study literature that explores “experiences of migration”, such as tedious stuff by Zadie Smith and Monica Ali (but I expect not by VS Naipaul. I wonder why that is?). In citizenship classes, compulsory since 2002, the children will be taught about Britain’s appalling imperialism and connivance in the slave trade — but not, one suspects, Africa’s longer-standing connivance in the slave trade, or, indeed, its appalling record of self-governance.

At every point kids are to be instructed in the benefits of immigration and multiculturalism — of which there have indeed been a great many. But not the deficits, of which arguably there have also been many. There is a clear political line and the children will not be allowed to deviate from it. They will be judged not by their understanding of acquired knowledge, but by their attitudes — their conformity to a contentious political opinion held by the secretary of state for education and Sir Keith Ajegbo, whoever the hell he is.

There will not even be an optional module to consider the controversial proposition that Ajegbo is a self-serving, politically motivated idiot whose views about the national curriculum should be scrunched up and thrown in the wastepaper bin. Instead of being taken seriously and rammed down the throat of every child in the country.

Zadie Smith is hugely overrated. Were she middle-aged, white and male, White Teeth would never have been published. Monica Ali's Brick Lane is rather good, although the plot runs out of steam towards the end. In fact it does not celebrate multiculturalism, but is very critical of the Bengali community, so much so that some of its spokesmen - and of course they would be men - pronounced a half-baked mini-fatwa on Ms Ali. Brick Lane is not literature, however, and should be read in the student's own time rather than studied as part of the school curriculum.

Monica Ali, who grew up in Bolton, read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford. Zadie Smith read English at Kings College, Cambridge. We can assume, then, that while they were at school they read something other than Zadie Smith or Monica Ali, not least because their books hadn't been written yet.

This is from Reuters

Conservative leader David Cameron has incurred the wrath of Muslim groups by likening those with extreme Islamic views to the far-right British National Party. Those who seek a sharia state, or special treatment and a separate law for British Muslims are, in many ways, the mirror image of the BNP," Cameron said in a speech in Birmingham on Monday.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, responded by telling BBC News that anyone would find it offensive to be likened to the BNP.  "This link of any Muslim mainstream organisation to the fascism of BNP, it will be taken as a serious offence," he said.  Oh how the truth hurts.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, an organisation Britain threatened to ban after the 2005 attacks on London, also criticised the remarks.  "Cameron is guilty of scaremongering," Imran Waheed, media representative for the group in Britain, said.

The Conservative Party's National and International Security Policy Group is due to launch a report on Tuesday which the BBC said would suggest groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) harboured and even promoted extremist views. "Its hardline members tend to dominate policy and crowd out more moderate and varied voices," the BBC's flagship political programme "Newsnight" quoted the report as saying.  "As a result the MCB's claim to foster good community relations and work for the good of society as a whole is hard to reconcile with some of the positions it's taken," it said.

The interim report also said a "significant number" of Muslim groups were "keener to promote ideology than the totality of the communities they claim to represent," the BBC reported.

"Suhail Khan was the moderator of the panel the last time I spoke at CPAC, in 2003. He ended the discussion with a long disquisition about how he had read the Qur'an twice and that it taught peace. I was just about to respond when he announced that the session was over"--Robert Spencer's comment on the moderator for his upcoming CSPAN debate with Dinesh D'Souza

Suhail Khan of the "Free Market Institute." Soon to be joined, no doubt, by the "Family Values Institute" headed up by one Dinesh D'Souza. Fundraising will be handled by Grover Norquist. I'm sure the Saudi Embassy can, through intermediaries, be counted on to come through.

The mother of Muhammed Faisal Saksak, the 21-year-old suicide bomber who carried out Monday's attack in Eilat, said she was aware of her son's plan to blow himself up and that she had wished him "good luck."

Dozens of Palestinians, chanting slogans against Israel and the US, converged on the family's home to "congratulate" them on the success of the attack. --from this news item

The same story was just on NPR, with various "Palestinians" justifying this murder, as they do all others in that long-running and indeed endless series, as a response to "occupation" by the Israelis?

What "Occupation"? There is not a single Israeli soldier or civilian in Gaza? There is not a single Israeli soldier or civilian in the entire territory in the "West Bank" in the territories controlled, for thirteen years now, the "Palestinian Authority."

But of course as long as Israel exists, there will be, in Arab Muslim eyes, an "occupation." For no Infidel state has a right to exist -- first, on any land that was once part of Dar al-Islam, but then, of course, on any land anywhere. And it will be fascinating to see if Islam manages to incorporate territories in Europe into Dar al-Islam (that is, into the lands where "Islam dominates and is not to be dominated" and Muslims rule) that were never previously part of Dar al-Islam, while somehow other areas, possibly including Israel, that were to have been a priority, somehow manage to hold out.

There can be no doubt, however, that the fate of Western Europe, and of Israel, is one: that Islamic triumphs in either theatre, or for that matter elsewhere -- in India, or the Caucasus, or in sub-Sahran Africa, or in Canada -- will feed that natural sense of triumphalism, and any victory by Islam anywhere does not sate but whets the Muslim appetite. And that is why, even if you have no particular interest in the southern Sudanese, or the Jews of Israel, or the Serbs in Kosovo, or the Armenians, or the Hindus being harried and murdered in Bangladesh or Pakistan, or the Buddhists in southern Thailand, or Australians merely trying to stop gang-rapes and the takeover of beaches by Muslims, or those under death threats -- Robert Redeker in France, or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, or Carl Hagen in Norway, or the editors of Jyllands-Posten in Denmark -- you have to express your solidarity and total support for all of them.

For all Infidels, even those who do not realize it, or have to manufacture a sympathy that does not come naturally to them (how many Hindus are likely to worry about the fate of Christians in Norway, or how many Nigerian Christians will worry about the Buddhists being beheaded in southern Thailand? All Infidels are in this together. They must be made to understand this. American Christians are affected by the fate of Hindus and Buddhists, and the anti-Israel brigade that has grown so strong in Western Europe has to be exposed and undone, in order not only to help Israel, but to save Western Europe.

Among the "liberals" whom Dinesh D'Souza deplores, are many of the most important protectors and defenders of the West, those who admire its liberties, and choose to exercise their freedoms not merely observe them. These include: Oriana Fallaci, Pym Fortuyn (murdered by an instrument of Islam), Theo van Gogh (murdered by a Muslim), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (who has sought safety in the United States), Ibn Warraq (ditto), Ali Sina (ditto), Anwar Shaikh (in Wales), Bat Ye'or, Bruce Bawer, Alain Finkielkraut, Alain Besancon, Alexandre del Valle, Jean Peroncel-Hugoz, Anne-Marie Delcambre, and many others.

Every single one of those listed is an atheist, and hence part of the group that Dinesh D'Souza deplores. Every single one is, in political terms, an old-fashioned liberal. Every single one has done far more to explain Islam, to stand up to Islam, to analyze Islam, to disseminate information about Islam that is useful to Infidels than Dinesh D"Souza with all his religiosity and "family values."

At least one moral should be drawn from this: Dinesh D'Souza is All Hat, and No Cattle.

"Bat Ye'or saw all this in 1994, when she said: "I do not see serious signs of a Europeanization of Islam anywhere, a move that would be expressed in a relativization of religion, a self-critical view of the history of Islamic imperialism...we are light years away from such a development...On the contrary, I think that we are participating in the Islamization of Europe, reflected both in daily occurrences and in our way of thinking...All the racist fanaticism that permeates the Arab countries and Iran has been manifested in Europe in recent years..." Lewis was light years away from saying anything like this at that time, but it is good to see that he is catching up."-- from Robert Spencer's comment on the Bernard Lewis interview with the Jerusalem Post linked by Rebecca here

Lewis has been wrong about a number of things. He was wrong, dead wrong, in his enthusiasm for the Oslo Accords. Indeed, he debated Douglas Feith once on this, and Feith, who did not know about Islam enough to discuss Muslim treaty-making and the model of Al-Hudaibiyyah, was without a main weapon, but still managed, purely on the basis of the disastrous wording of that agreement and on the consistent pattern of "Palestinian" ignoring of even the most limited promises that it had had to make, to defeat Lewis soundly.

Ask Lewis about his support for the Oslo Accords, and he replies, testily and laconically, "I was wrong." But he has never written about this. He has never explained what it was that he was wrong about. Was he wrong because Arafat was a bad man who couldn't be trusted? Was it something in the particular circumstances? Or was it, rather, something deeper, wider, more profound, something that means that any agreement made by Muslims with Infidels is going to be breached whenever and wherever possible? Does Lewis read about the history of Arab treaty-making with Israel? Surely he knows that every single agreement made by Israel with the Arabs, while being scrupulously observed in every jot and tittle by the Israelis, has always been violated by the Arabs whenever they can get away with it, and they have been able to get away with it quite often.

Why does Lewis not write about this? Why doesn't he explain, or first explain to himself, why he was wrong about the Oslo Accords? Lewis was more than an enthusiast; he would call people up, and hector them if they raised an objection to his enthusiasm for Oslo, or his attempt to assuage Muslim sensibilities on Jerusalem,  or other matters.

And why doesn't he, Lewis, explain how wrong he was about that Iraq venture, helping to persuade or echo the crazed idea that American soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" and that "the liberation of Baghdad would make the liberation of Kabul seem like a funeral procession" and did nothing to explain to Cheney or others upon whom he apparently had a certain influence, what the Sunni-Shi'a split was, how deep and durable it was and how the recent history of Iraq had only made it worse, and how demographic changes in Iraq (the Shi'a having multiplied faster than the Sunnis, just as they have been doing in Lebanon), and the power of not secularists like the Shah, but fanatical Shi'a in Tehran, insured that the Shi'a would never give up, and of course the Sunnis inside and outside Iraq can never acquiesce in losing power, and Baghdad, the most important city outside of Mecca in the mythology of Muslims, to the Rafidite dogs, those quasi-Persians, of Shi'a Islam.

He promoted, instead, his Shi'a friends, inveigled by them, or rather sharing with them their own forgetting what the people and country of Iraq were really like. Chalabi, for example, the man who had been out of Iraq since 1958, when he left it as a boy, or Kanan Makiya, who left it a dozen years ago, or Rend al-Rahim Francke, who co-wrote that book with Graham Fuller, or others, who like many of the most westernized, secularized, advanced representatives of the Arabs or Iranians, exaggerate the numbers of those who think as they do, forget the primitive masses, avert their eyes, or will not speak openly, about the permanent presence of the gorilla in the room, Islam, and so are guides in the end to very little.

And Lewis would write articles that stooped to political advertising for a specific candidate --the most egregious being that article he wrote proposing a Hashemite king for Iraq, a preposterously unrealistic proposal, which he co-signed with James Woolsey for the Wall Street Journal, a piece so transparently meant to promote plummy-voiced Prince Hassan of Jordan, Lewis's friend and host in Amman, that he should have been ashamed to publish it.

And then he got angry, got visibly angry, about those who questioned the democracy project, the belief, in Bush's unforgettable words, that "ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East" just want freedom. Lewis's own contribution to the standard authority on Islam, written several decades ago, explains why the Arab "hurriya" is not the same thing as English "freedom." Lewis knows, or once did, that in Islam it is the revealed will of Allah that should be the guide to the slaves of Allah, and not the slaves of Allah who, by expressing their will, through mere head-counting, mere elections, mere expressions of what mere mortals want or think they want, that should determine political legitimacy. And the location, in Islam, of legitimacy of government in the Ruler who is a Muslim, and never in the people, is something Lewis, who has on more than one occasion tried to hush people up, told them they should not raise certain issues, should go along with certain pretenses about Islam, now looks about, and sees that whenever he has supported a policy - the Oslo Accords, the Iraq farce -- he has been wrong. And yet he does not stop to think about exactly how and why he was wrong, or what obligation he has, to his many acolytes and admirers who bristle at any criticism of him, why he was wrong. And why was he wrong? He was wrong because, all of his life, he has simply failed to make sense of his vast learning, in order to see clearly the permanent menace and malevolence of Islam toward Infidels.

He missed, he underplayed, he would not quite allow himself to understand, that anti-Jewish feeling in the world of Islam had no need, as he has maintained, of the example of Europe's antisemitism or of the Nazis. Just because the antisemitism of Islam differs in its origins from that to be found, historically, in Western Christendom, and just because the Muslim mistreatment of Jews was only part of a larger program of mistreatment of mistreatment of all non-Muslims, is no reason to deny, as Lewis has, the antisemitism or anti-Jewish aspect of Islam, that is clear, and strong, and not to be denied or whitewashed.

Finally, why did Lewis for so many years behave so badly toward Bat Ye'or? Why did he urge others not to give her a forum in Israel? Why did he do nothing to encourage the reception of her work, and behind her back try to undercut it as "polemical" (and going on to echo Muslim objections) except when his interlocutor proved too knowledgeable for him to get away with those behind-the-scenes belittlements.

Now that he is going about telling us that the threat to the Western world is real, that Israel is imperilled (and imperilled partly by the doings of Bernard Lewis, and the powerful people he has helped to mislead about the Oslo Accords, about "democracy" in Iraq, about antisemitism in Islam, about Islam itself), he owes a setting down, in writing, of why he supported the Oslo Accords and why he was wrong to, of why he believed that in Iraq Americans would be greeted as "liberators" and that the whole Iraq the Model project made sense because he apparently believed that democracy and Islam can go together quite well (after all, didn't caliphs and other Muslim rulers have advisers? Why, yes, they did. And didn't they consult with others? Why yes, they did. They did consult, in order to make sure that they were doing the wise, the islamically correct, thing. So what? What does that have to do with Western-style democracy with its location of legitimacy in the expressed will of the people, and its emphasis on the rights of the individual?).

Cultivated, linguistically well-trained, clearly much more learned, possessing a fluent pen, the last of the old-style Orientalists, feline when he wants to be (that masterful dispatching of Said in an essay, and especially that single footnote about "thawra") why can't Lewis, who along with his friends, such as Bassam Tibi, who sees and is alarmed, at long last do what Goitein, who came to respect, admire, endorse the work, and the warnings, of the far-sighted Bat Ye'or, or Maxine Rodinson who after a lifetime of left-wing tiersmindiste sympathy for Islam finally came to appreciate Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim" (a book assigned to Lewis for review by the TLS, a review he never dared to write) why can't Lewis do the intelligent, correct, and finally, the decent thing, and tell us where he was wrong, and why Bat Ye'or, and why Ibn Warraq, and why others, have been grimly right.

Now. While he still has time. And when it matters.

First a little, thence to more, from past postings on John Simpson, director of the BBC World Service, a man deeply and viciously anti-Israel and slightly less deeply, and only a bit less viciously, anti-American. Note in particular his friendship with Peter Hounam (last noted when he was arrested by the Israelis when he was in their country making as much trouble for them as he could -- see Simpson's glowing review of Hounam's protocolish "Operation Cyanide":

#1.

"The BBC effectively has an Islamic agenda..."-- from a reader

Not so much the BBC, but a number of powerful people at the BBC. The BBC World Service is run by John Simpson, deeply anti-American and anti-Israeli, who in turn reports to the Foreign Office, for the World Service is under its control.

Another factor is that the kind of semi-educated young, without any particular skills or training, who are picked up by the BBC. Like hires like. Someone who appeared to believe that Islam exhibited many of the features of Fascism, or who thought, for example, that the cost of Muslim migrants in the Western world or the U.K. was simply too high for the indigenous Infidels to continue to pay, would not be hired by the B.B.C. today or, if hired, promoted. Someone who was seen to read The Telegraph, and not The Guardian or The Independent, someone who did not think that the American government was necessarily entirely of the devil's party, someone who seemed to think that Western civilization might actually exist, and be worth protecting, is unlikely to be hired by the B.B.C. today. It is not only a question of high policies. It is a question of personnel. In this respect the B.B.C. is only a more extreme case of NPR, or for that matter of most academic departments of literature and history.

Think of the mental makeup of America's Bright Young Things. Think of their proud parents, describing those 2-3 month "internships" by which well-off and well-connected young people, go for a few months in Moscow (battered women), or Cambodia (teenage prostitutes), or Darfur (black refugees). They may know not a word of the relevant local language (so just imagine what that means), they arrive to "help" for a few months, and then just as quickly depart (while the real workers stay on and on), and these 2-3-4 month stints presumably give them an "insight" into things and, though they would not recognize it, prove valuable to them, in helping swell their resume and hence their future job prospects, just as the enterprise of colonialism permitted those middle-class British or French or Belgians who went out to the colonies to live lives that, materially, were an improvement on what they would enjoy at home.

The old colonialist has been replaced by the NGO careerist. The propagandist for Empire has been replaced by the propagandist (on the BBC) for Arab imperialism. It has been the most successful and most damaging imperialism in world history. For the Arabs used Islam, a faith concocted to justify and promote Arab conquest, as a vehicle for Arab supremacist ideology. Those conquered by Islam, and forcibly converted (for the need to escape the onerous conditions of dhimmitude certainly constitutes "force"), did not merely convert. They surrendered their own histories, their own pre-Islamic pasts. They assumed Arab names, and false Arab lineages. They took as the models of behavior some Arabs of the 7th century -- the sole models of behavior. It has been an extraordinary phenomenon. No European imperialists came close to such an achievement, whereby those conquered remained unaware of the extent to which their minds and histories had been appropriated -- and permanently.

[Posted by: Hugh at April 28, 2005 10:06 AM]

#2.

"How does your theory about Simpson and the Beeb..."-- from a reader

I present no "theory" about Simpson. He is what he is, deeply anti-Israel, so deeply that it must emerge from that pathological condition which all civilized people have gotten use to detecting.

I will now introduce into evidence Simpson's review of the absurd book by his good friend Peter Hounam. Hounam has been doing what damage he could to the state of Israel for the past 30 years, perhaps most effectively in his encouraging the quasi-demented Mordechai Vanunu in his own revelations; indeed, when last heard from, Hounam had been arrested in Israel for more of the same. Hounam wrote a book about the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, which the Israelis always maintained was an accident, with considerable evidence, and their version of events was completely vindicated not only by the book-length investigation of an American judge, but by the tapes of the pilots' conversations, finally released by the American government a year or two ago.

Nonetheless, it is one of the favorite topics of American and other antisemites. James Akins likes the topic; so do the Saudis and all of their hirelings. And John Simpson and Peter Hounam are fond of it. Hounam even wrote a book, "The Cyanide Conspiracy," which charges that the attack was deliberate, that it was orchestrated from within the American government by pro-Zionist agents, and that it was designed to be a casus belli between America and Egypt. All nonsense, but not for John Simpson.

Here are two reviews of this conspiracy theory deeply antisemitic book by Peter Hounam, for which not only was there not the slightest factual basis for it, but the recent release of the tapes made at the time by the Americans, of the Israeli pilots' conversation, and their analysis, shows clearly, as sane (i.e., non-antisemitic) commentators have shown, that the Israeli version of the incident -- that it was a mistake -- was in fact the real one.

The first review is simply to give a flavor of the book.

The second review -- the one by John Simpson, for years the czar of the BBC World Service, is given so that BBC supporters and detractors alike may get a hint of what John Simpson is all about when it comes to Israel:

Review #1:

OPERATION CYANIDE: Why the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War
III, by Peter Hounam, Vision, a division of Satin Publications, Ltd, London,
2003, $24.95

Since it reviewed A. Jay Cristol's book, THE LIBERTY INCIDENT, in August 2003,
MILITARY HISTORY was bombarded with letters, including some from outraged survivors, insisting that the Israeli attack on their ship on June 8, 1967, was not in error, but deliberate (see letters, P. 8), and demanding that the guilty party confess to the crime. Absent from all such accusations, however, was a substantial explanation of motive: What would make it worth Israel's while to attack a ship -- even a spy ship -- being operated by one of its few supporters in the world?

In OPERATION CYANIDE, Peter Hounam, an investigative reporter for the SUNDAY TIMES and the British Broadcasting System with 30 years' experience, presents the results of his research into the question of "who really dunnit," which evolved into more of what he called a "why dunnit." Hounam structures his book accordingly, as the reader follows him from interview to interview, gathering clues like a detective from testimonies that tend to be scattered, fragmentary, guarded and sometimes almost cryptic. As Hounam "connects the dots," however, the scenario that emerges is fantastic and yet, in view of the United States' rush to war with Iraq in 2003, not entirely implausible.

In essence, President Lyndon B. Johnson and some key officials, seeing the increasingly Soviet-leaning Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser as a threat, made secret arrangements to help Israel in its coming June offensive with the intention of toppling Nasser. As part of Operation Cyanide, USS LIBERTY was sent to operate off the Sinai coast, where it was to be sunk with all hands by unmarked Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats, after which the United States would blame the attack on Egypt and launch carrier air strikes against Cairo -- with nuclear weapons if necessary. The stubborn refusal of LIBERTY'S crew to die or let their ship sink after 75 minutes of air and sea attack -- in spite of two American carrier sorties to aid her being inexplicably called back -- led to the cancellation of Operation Cyanide, Israel's apology and offer of restitution for a "tragic mistake," the Johnson Administration's swift acceptance of that explanation and an equally quick, reassuring "hot line" telephone call to Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin.

The first book to seriously examine the possible reason behind the attack on USS LIBERTY, OPERATION CYANIDE presents fragmentary evidence to support an extraordinary theory. If, however, the emergence of further evidence proves its premise to be true, one cannot help but wonder if their being set up for destruction by the government they swore to serve, in the interests of starting a nuclear war based on a lie, is the sort of truth that LIBERTY'S bitter survivors were hoping for.
Jon Guttman

=======================

Review #2:

BOOK REVIEW OF "OPERATION CYANIDE"
By John Simpson
BBC World Affairs Editor

This is an extraordinary story, one of the most extraordinary, perhaps, of the entire twentieth century. Suppose, in an attempt to shore up his critically damaged presidency, Lyndon Johnson deliberately engineered an event in which American lives were sacrificed and the United States was brought disturbingly close to an all-out nuclear war with Russia? Suppose this involved a secret agreement between Israel and American intelligence, which resulted in an Israeli attack on an American naval vessel, in the latter stages of the Six-Day War?

It sounds, I know, like one of those depressing conspiracy theories which cluster round every big controversial event from the death of Princess Diana to the attack on the World Trade Centre. People often have problems in handling the banality of truth, and prefer to imagine deeper, darker plots beneath the surface. Yet this book is based on careful, rigorous investigation by a well-known and respected journalist who has meticulously tracked down the people and the documents who have survived from
the event itself: the attack on the USS Liberty, in the eastern Mediterranean in June 1967.

As with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, four years earlier, the official version is even more unlikely than some of the conspiracy theories. In order to believe the hasty, often contradictory account which came out of Washington, you would have to accept all sorts of virtual impossibilities: that Israeli planes and torpedo boats could have mistaken a modern American warship of ten thousand tons for an elderly Egyptian horse transport less than a quarter of its size, come to within fifty feet of it without spotting that it was flying a particularly large American flag, and blazed away at it from close range for forty minutes before realizing what it was they were shooting at. A hasty American enquiry immediately afterwards called it 'a bona fide mistake.' That seems, to say the least, a little implausible.

Yet this is the official version, which stands to this day. Any other version -- that of the Liberty's surviving crew members, for instance -- has been extremely hard to establish because of the intensity of the security blanket which the Israelis and Americans wrapped around the entire incident.

The blanket remains in place to this day, yet this book provides sufficient evidence for any open-minded person to see that something else lies underneath: something very disturbing.

I have found Peter Hounam's research compelling, and the story which unfolds in these pages rivetting. It is time a little daylight was shed on Operation Cyanide. This book does precisely that, and we should be grateful for it.

John Simpson
Paris
October 2002

Do you still think that it is a "theory" about John Simpson, the man who conveys the Foreign Office line, along with a considerable anti-Israel animus, deeply felt, passionately believed, of his own, to everyone (not that everyone needs encouragement -- Judy Swallow doesn't, nor do a good many others on the BBC World Service) at the BBC World Service.

As for the detestable Orla Guerin (married, I think, to a "Palestinian" Arab), she has no business being awarded anything, and has no business being kept on in a job where she can mouth her venomous views, paid for by the hapless license-fee payers of Great Britain, not all of whom can possibly enjoy enduring the requirement that they pay the salary for someone who is as much part of the enemy camp, as Lord Haw-Haw or Tokyo Rose.

[Posted by: Hugh at April 28, 2005 01:36 PM]

Note, please, that were this understood as the kind of war it is, a man like John Simpson would be treated as were Nazi sympathizers during World War II. He would long ago have lost his job, and at the very least be under surveillance. That he helps to mold minds all over the world, at the direction of the Foreign Office, and that he continues to keep a real sense of what Islam is all about from listeners everywhere (even as he endorses, and even accepts and repeats, the most absurd anti-Israel canards, like that of Peter Hounam), gives one pause.

If there is any conspiracy, it is one involving rich and powerful Arab interests, who have bought and paid their way into the chanceries, and the minds, of Western leaders everywhere. Sometimes the bribery is clearcut, as with Chirac. Sometimes it comes indirectly, through the promise of business deals (chiefly armaments sales and oil concessions to the oil companies of sufficiently-compliant nations).

Does John Simpson have friends and acquaintances in high places? How could he not? He is in a very high place himself. Is he friendly with Alistair Crooke? With James Akins? With Patrick Seale? Does he get along well with Edward Mortimer, Chief Speechwriter to Kofi Annan, himself the enthusiastic endorser of a book by Lennie Brenner about how Zionists collaborated with Nazis -- as vicious a book as can be imagined, but one that was a positive boon to our Edward (quasi-plantagenet) Mortimer when he went looking for work at the U.N. and, having just come off a stint of Euro-Arab Dialoguish stuff, was the right rat for the right office at the right U.N.

[Posted by: Hugh at April 28, 2005 01:54 PM]

John Simpson should not be running the BBC World Service. In wartime, one incarcerates those who sympathize with the enemy, and who work to undercut one's allies. Israel is a fellow Infidel and ally of all Infidels. Muslim Arabs are the enemy. Simpson, in a well-ordered world, would have, at the very least, his phones tapped, his every move monitored. He is an Agent of Influence -- whether out of conviction or for pay, or the overlapping of the two, doesn't matter. Objectively, John Simpson and the BBC World Service -- like other parts of the BBC but with special venom -- help to promote the apologists for Islam.

They must be exposed, and then must be turned out. The mixture as before will not do.