"Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church," she [Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] said.

She added, however, that as a black child in the South, forbidden to use certain water fountains and shunned from certain restaurants, she was also in a good position to understand the feelings of the Palestinians.--from this news article

Her life's performance as the Good Girl, the one who practiced the piano, and then did everything dutifully, if never brilliantly, all the way up to her time as graduate student of Madeline Albright's father, has not been sufficient to allow her first to recognize that there was something new, something especially worrisome, that she had a duty to learn about, and that something was Islam, and furthermore, her even less talented boss has no idea what the actual texts and tenets of Islam are, and if neither one knows them, they have missed the "core issue" of the Lesser Jihad by the Muslim Arabs (with some islamochristians permitting themselves to be used to promote this Islamic cause): the Core Issue is the worldview of Islam, according to which Believers and Infidels are in a state of permanent war (if not always open warfare), and it is the right and duty of Muslims to engage in a struggle, or Jihad, to remove all barriers to Islam, to the dominance of Islam, and of course, as part of that, to enlarge Dar al-Islam until it swallows up, little by little, all of Dar al-Harb. And furthermore, high on the To-Do list of Islam is the recovery of every square inch or dunam of land that was once in Muslim possession, but now -- most temporarily in the Muslim view -- is in the possession of non-Muslims, such as those infuriating and pesky Jews who still control the Infidel state of Israel.

The codeword for explosives was "dough." He added that a "taxi driver" meant a suicide bomber and to "marry" meant dying as a martyr. --from this news article

"Take this dough and use it to get married"

Modern lexicographers have always had a professional interest in underworld slang, as it is referred to by Eric Partridge in "A Dictionary of Slang," , or "canting and thieves' slang" as it is called in such earlier compilations of the same thing in the 1811 work by Francis Grose, "A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue."

Perhaps now is the time for Western members of NATO to put out a dictionary of Islamo-English, Islamo-German, Islamo-French, and so on, a guide to the special vocabulary of what is not exactly an underworld or malavita, even if many of its members make their living by crime, for they see themselves not as criminals but as the bravest of Muslims, those engaged in violent Jihad rather than in all the other kinds, that other Muslims use and, correctly, find just as or even more effective.

CHICAGO (AP) - A 23-year-old man who once dreamed of waging violent jihad in Illinois now faces 30 years to life when he's sentenced next year.

Derrick Shareef pleaded guilty today to plotting a hand grenade attack on a Rockford mall crowded with Christmas shoppers.--from this news item

I wonder if he knew about how, in Islam, slavery is forever licit, because Muhammad had slaves, and that the Arab slave trade in Africa began earlier, lasted longer (indeed, despite the efforts of Western powers to totally stamp it out, the Arab enslavement of blacks, in Mauritania, in the Sudan, even deep inside Saudi Arabia itself, continues -- in the opinion of many observers, right up to the present day), and claimed far more victims, than did the Atlantic Slave Trade.

See Jan Hogedoorn's article, "The Hideous Trade."

See Sean O'Callaghan's book, published in 1961, "The Slave Trade Today" -- all about slavery in the Arab states, a book that helped cause the outcry that forced Saudi Arabia, most reluctantly, to finally ban slavery (officially, but the practice continued unofficially) in 1962, the last country on earth to do so.

U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska noted Dr. Rafiq Sabir, 53, showed no remorse after his May conviction for conspiring to provide material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida members so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans..

He said a co-defendant, jazz musician and martial arts expert Tarik Shah, had duped him into taking an oath with an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter, never explaining that he was pledging loyalty to al-Qaida or its leader, Osama bin Laden.

"I'm an extremely gullible man," he said. --from this news item

If he was taken in, if he was merely "gullible," if he merely bought a line, then why is he not now, at this point, showing a little of that famous buyer's remorse? The fact that he implacably has shown not the slightest remorse tells us everything. Speaks volumes, possibly more than the 26 that make up the eleventh (onion-skin) edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

"That's me he's calling an idiot. Nice job, Hugh (or Robert, or Hubert Fitzspencer--whoever you are). Very mature and professional." a comical reader

No, mon vieux, I did not call you an idiot. I did something different.

What I wrote was this:

"You surely are not the moral idiot you have painted yourself to be. Surely you have not thought this all through. Surely history, including the last millennium or two, or at least back to the beginning of Islam's conquests and subjugations, and the fantastic story of what happened to the Jews, those who remained, and those who made their way out of the Middle East, should make some impression on you."

I said "surely you are not the moral idiot you have painted yourself to be."

Why not put that brush away, with which you are not merely painting yourself, but now tarring-and-feathering yourself, and holding yourself up to ridicule? Why not take up something that Islam hates even more than painting, music, free and skeptical inquiry, humor, and so on. Yes, why not take up sculpture.

My Russian billionaire friends (magari!) tell me that at the latest billionaire's fair everyone wanted his very own equestrian statue, modelled on the one that Catherine the Great placed in Petersburg. So don't worry. You'll have a market. Billionaires never go out of style.

You know. The Bronze Horseman, the statue to Peter the Great erected by Catherine the Great, Ekaterina II. The one that has two inscriptions, or rather one inscription in two languages.

There's the Latin:

"Petro Primo Catharina Secunda MDCCLXXXII" in Latin.

And there's the Russian:

"Петру первому Екатерина вторая, лето 1782" in Russian.

They mean the same thing. To Peter the First From Catherine the Second. It's a great and lapidary line.

Great, and also lapidary, is the 1833 Petersburg poem by Pushkin, "The Bronze Horseman" in which a poor Evgenij, living in a city whose proportions are not made for men, and that overwhelms him, is caught in the famous flood.

Read "Mednij Vsadnik" in English, or possibly in French. And while you are reading the poem, make sure to read Roman Jakobson's article on Pushkin's play with verb forms -- perfective and imperfective -- as a device (priyom) in "The Bronze Horseman."

And then, if you stop being a moral idiot about Israel, I will help you change your imperfect(ive) statements into more perfect(ive) ones.

What a deal. Up to you -- the first person singular of the Russian non-existent verb "optovat' -- buster.

This sketch about British newspapers, linked in my post here, is from Yes Prime Minister, one of our best sitcoms. Watch it - it's worth it:

Not before time. Steve Boriss in Pajamas Media:

For the first time since the Beatles, there is a British invasion. The last one transformed our music, this one may transform our news.

When you visit a news stand in London, you instantly sense you are in a different country. Unlike the 1 or 2 daily papers you would see in a typical U.S. city, you may be confronted by 8 or more. The front pages bristle with excitement and vie for your attention. They are engaged in heated competition, a concept that seems so foreign to newspapers in America.

You might ask, if the competition among London newspapers is so fierce, how can so many of them survive? Wouldn’t all readers naturally gravitate to the best couple of them, putting the rest out of business as happened in so many American cities decades ago? The reason so many survive is that they deliberately appeal to different target audiences, and differentiate themselves from the others largely on the basis of - are you ready for this? - BIAS. While in modern American journalism, “bias” is a four-letter word, mixing facts and opinion has never troubled papers in London. The British also do not share American journalists’ prudish disdain for “boobs” and humor. The differences in their intended target audiences is so obvious, even their front pages transparently appeal to those of different worldviews, socio-economic statuses, and tastes.

For just about any reader, London’s views-papers and boobs-papers make for a lot more enjoyable reading than America's dull fare. Their titles include the Morning Star (Far Left), the Guardian (Left), the Daily Mirror (Center-Left Tabloid), the Sun (Center "T & A" Tabloid), the Daily Mail (Center-Right Tabloid), the Times of London (Center-Right), the Financial Times (Center-Right Business), and the Telegraph (Right).

Using this as a key, you should now be able to follow this skit from the British TV comedy "Yes Prime Minister."
[...]

London's viewsy, witty, and naughty newspapers now point to the future of news. America’s snoozy, prissy, and haughty papers had better wake up.

So, will we see Hillary Clinton's melons on Page 3 of the New York Times? Tastes differ. I may be wrong, but I can't imagine the following passage by Caitlin Moran in the London Times appearing in the New York Times, or for that matter in any quality paper other than a British one. Some readers may recognise it from my article Bossom:

“Boobs” are too Benny Hill. Boobs are perfectly spherical, bouncing, jokey — you might as well refer to your “pink chest clowns” and have done with it. Boobs are also, by and large, white and working class — you don’t really get Bangladeshi boobs, or boobs from Bahrain, or the boobs of Lady Antonia Fraser. Boobs are what Jordan and Pamela Anderson and Barbara Windsor have — except when Barbara had a breast cancer storyline in EastEnders, when they quickly became “breasts”. “Boobs”, of course, can’t get cancer, or lactate, or be subject to the subtle erotic arts of the Tao. Boobs exist only to jiggle up and down on the chests of women between the ages of 14 and 32, after which they get too droopy, and then presumably fall off the face of the Earth, into space, maybe to eventually become part of the giant rings of Saturn. “Bosom” sounds a bit Les Dawson...

“Cleavage” doesn’t work, obviously — “I have a pain in my cleavage” — and neither does “Embonpoint”, because it sounds both embroidered and pointy, and so would cease to exist when you took your bra off. “Tits” seems nicely down-to-earth for day-to-day use — “Give me a KitKat, I’ve just caught my tit in the door” — but struggles to make a satisfactory transition to night-time use, where it seems a little too brusque. Personally, I quite like the idea of “The Guys” — but then that’s also how I refer to my seven brothers and sisters, and as potential confusion there could lead to an even greater incidence of mental illness than we already have, I’ll probably have to leave it be. 

Isn't this all a bit vulgar? Should the New York Times really talk about tits with such gay abandon?  Well, from what I gather, the New York Times, AKA New Duranty Times, should not be too po-faced about this. After all, it's been talking through its arse for long enough. 

For famous people to say that they hate fame is as much of a cliché as for them to say that they used to be an ugly duckling or geek. It's disingenuous attention-seeking twaddle. The Times leader puts the recluse under the spotlight, where he is happiest:

Greta Garbo so craved anonymity that she became a Hollywood movie legend. Had Howard Hughes confined himself to making money instead of becoming an eccentric recluse, who might recognise his name today? The fastidiously reclusive Lucian Freud is Britain's most famous painter. Stanley Kubrick was as well known for shunning publicity as for making 2001: A Space Odyssey. Would Thomas Pynchon, never photographed or officially interviewed, be so renowned as the author of V and Gravity's Rainbow were he not such a legendary recluse? Pynchon is so famous he has made appearances on The Simpsons; albeit with a paper bag over his head. The reclusive J.D. Salinger, not a word in print in four decades, is nearly as eminent.

Joe Klein did the sales of Primary Colours, his roman à clef about the Clinton presidency, nothing but good by signing it “Anonymous”. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis flaunted her appetite for anonymity by marrying, in turn, a future American president and a Greek shipping magnate.

And the moral? That some are born famous, and some achieve fame; but in order to have stellar fame thrust upon you, just shun it vigorously.

Some time ago I read about a "burglar" who would break into people's houses and tidy up. Sadly, he never broke into mine. The French - much as it pains me to say this - have gone one better. "Cultural guerrillas" have been breaking and entering - and restoring. From The Guardian:

Clock watching ... the Pantheon in Paris. Photograph: Alamy

It is one of Paris's most celebrated monuments, a neoclassical masterpiece that has cast its shadow across the city for more than two centuries.

But it is unlikely that the Panthéon, or any other building in France's capital, will have played host to a more bizarre sequence of events than those revealed in a court last week.

Four members of an underground "cultural guerrilla" movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France's cultural heritage, were cleared on Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument in a plot worthy of Dan Brown or Umberto Eco.

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

"When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Panthéon's officials know or not," said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. "We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work.

"The Panthéon's administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop, he had to take a deep breath and sit down."

The Centre of National Monuments, embarrassed by the way the group entered the building so easily, did not take to the news kindly, taking legal action and replacing the administrator...

Klausmann and his crew are connaisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organised rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.

"We would like to be able to replace the state in the areas it is incompetent," said Klausmann. "But our means are limited and we can only do a fraction of what needs to be done. There's so much to do in Paris that we won't manage in our lifetime."

The Untergunther are already busy working on another restoration mission Paris. The location is top secret, of course. But the Panthéon clock remains one of its proudest feats.

Incidentally, the age of these "cultural guerrillas" is not given. But however young they are, I doubt very much that they are "youths" in the usual Parisian sense of the word.

Le mot et la chose

Madame, quel est votre mot,
Et sur le mot et sur la chose ?
On vous a dit souvent le mot,
On vous a fait souvent la chose.
Ainsi, de la chose et du mot
Vous pouvez dire quelque chose.
Et je gagerais que le mot
Vous plaît beaucoup moins que la chose.
Pour moi, voici quel est mon mot,
Et sur le mot, et sur la chose :
J'avouerai que j'aime le mot,
J'avouerai que j'aime la chose.
Mais, c'est la chose avec le mot,
Mais, c'est le mot avec la chose,
Autrement, la chose et le mot
A mes yeux, seraient peu de chose.
Je crois même, en faveur du mot,
Pouvoir ajouter quelque chose ;
Une chose qui donne au mot
Tout l'avantage sur la chose :
C'est qu'on peut dire encore le mot,
Alors qu'on ne fait plus la chose.
Et pour peu que vaille le mot,
Mon Dieu, c'est toujours quelque chose !
De là, je conclus que le mot
Doit être mis avant la chose.
Qu'il ne faut ajouter au mot
Qu'autant que l'on peut quelque chose.
Et pour quelque jour où le mot
Viendra seul, hélas, sans la chose,
Il faut se réserver le mot
Pour se consoler de la chose.
Pour vous, je crois qu'avec le mot,
Vous voyez toujours autre chose.
Vous dites si gaiement le mot,
Vous méritez si bien la chose,
Que pour vous, la chose et le mot
Doivent être la même chose.
Et vous n'avez pas dit le mot
Qu'on est déjà prêt à la chose,
Mais quand je dis que le mot
Doit être mis avant la chose,
Vous devez me croire à ce mot,
Bien peu connaisseur en la chose.
Eh bien, voici mon dernier mot,
Et sur le mot et sur la chose :
Madame, passez-moi le mot
Et je vous passerai. la chose.

 

Abbé de l'Attaignant (1697 - 1779, Chanoine à Reims)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xKn-QVQzISo&feature=related

Fox News: British opposition Conservative party lawmaker William Hague called on the British government to "make it clear to the Sudanese authorities that she should be released immediately."

"To condemn Gillian Gibbons to such brutal and barbaric punishment for what appears to be an innocent mistake is clearly unacceptable," he said.

What exactly is the mistake? Forgetting that Muslims are complete lunatics when it come to anything to do to with Muhammad, whether it be a cartoon depiction of him or a Teddy Bear named after him?

In the U.S., a spokeswoman for the National Organization for Women said the situation is definitely on the radar, and N.O.W. is not ignoring it.

But she added that the U.S.-based organization is not putting out a statement or taking a position.

Radio personality Tammy Bruce, former president of the Los Angles chapter of the National Organization for Women and past member of their board of directors, criticized the organization for not taking a stand.

“We have a duty to make a difference for women around the world,” Bruce told FOX News. “The supposed feminist establishment is refusing to take a position in this regard because they have no sensibility of what is right anymore. They're afraid of offending people. They are bound by political correctness.”

“The American feminist movement has not taken one stand to support the women of Iraq, the women of Afghanistan, the women of Iran,” she said. “It is the United States Marines who have been doing the feminist work by liberating women and children around the world.”...

The NYTimes reports 100,000 in Gaza protested the Annapolis Peace conference.  One of the youths, a "Hamas protester in Gaza, Asma al-Fayoumi, 17, said: 'There is a division among Palestinians. There are those after food, life, those that are materialistic, like [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, and there are those like us who are seeking life after death.' The large turnout in Gaza pleased her. 'There are those who still enjoy good conscience,' she said."

In the more "moderate" West Bank — where one group, Hizb ut Tahrir (the Islamic Liberation Party), sees Hamas as a bunch of wimpy appeasers — the moderate Abbas's moderate Palestinian Authority security forces killed one protester in the course of shooting into crowds of Annapolis naysayers (no doubt with guns provided by the U.S. of A.).

Secretary of State Condi Rice insists that "70 percent" of Palestinians "say they're perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace."  Apparently they stayed home.

From the Washington Times:

Abu Haroon, a black-clad bearded militant from the Fatah-affiliated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, placed a Kalashnikov automatic rifle in the hands of his nephew. The rifle was twice as big as the child.

"Remember, as I may not be coming back: Learn to use this against the enemy one day," he said, giving the boy a farewell cuddle.

"I am proud of you, my son. Sometimes, it is necessary to kill," said Haroon, handing his son dates freshly picked from the tree towering over a small house in this densely populated town — one of the main centers of clashes in the intifada that started seven years ago.

A veteran of the conflict with Israel, Haroon said he first threw stones at soldiers as an 11-year-old, then began firing bullets in 2000, the start of the second intifada, and soon learned the dark arts of rocket preparation and dispatch.

After his farewells, four armed men in balaclavas joined Haroon, prayed on mats stretched out beside their weapons, and climbed into a white jeep. It was a gloriously sunny afternoon. They drove off northward, an al Samoud rocket carefully concealed with an oily cloth in the back of their battered white sport utility vehicle.

"We have orders not to fire any rockets on Tuesday because of the Annapolis summit, but we can resume normal activities after the summit ends," Haroon explained, claiming he is totally loyal to the political leadership of Fatah.

The rest of Paul Martin's report is here.

"'You are absolutely wrong on all counts. First of all there was never any Palestine to begin with... so who exactly do you mean by Palestinians?'

There were also no "Israelis" as such until Israel was officially created. Both identities are constructed ones. Again, so what? In the end, they're fighting over land. If either side wanted peace, they'd have it by now. As it is, there are people on both sides who have profited, and continue to profit, from the continuation of hostilities."
-- from a reader

No, but the word "Palestinians" and the invention of the "Palestinian people" was a deliberate construct. It did begin right away. It was not the term used, ever since there were Arabs in what Western Christendom called "Palestine." The phrase was never used by the local Arabs until after the defeat in the Six-Day War. And then, having jettisoned Shukairy a few years before, the Arabs collectively decided, with a little help from public-relations advisers in the West, to thoroughly redo their presentation.

The most important thing was to redefine the conflict. No longer are all those Arabs against a tiny Jewish state. No. Now, by an act of optical illusion, the tiny Jewish state would be transformed into a vast empire, this Greater Israel (why, the same BBC newscasters who routinely refer to Lebanon as that "tiny country" and to Jordan as that "tiny country" -- I hear it all the time -- for some reason never use that epithet with Israel. Never. Not once) which, even if it came into being, would be all of the size of Massachusetts, and less than one-one-thousandth the size of the Arab states.

But the absurdities pile up. It was time to rename the local Arabs, both those in the territories won by Israel that were part of the original Palestine Mandate (Gaza, the "West Bank" quondam Judea and Samaria), and those who had been called simply, and a bit too easily, "Arab refugees" -- by every single Arab spokesman at the U.N., the Arab League, and elsewhere -- living in those villages (always described as "refugee camps" though some are full-fledged cities, and all have stores and built-up areas; these are not tent cities -- the kind of thing that refugees in Darfur must endure) in Jordan, Lebanon, and so on.

The term "Israeli" was not deliberately invented to score political points. Far from it. The Jews of Israel are really what is in play here, the survival of a Jewish state, of the right of the Jews to have a state.

It is absurd to equate the deliberate and sinister creation of this fake "Palestinian identity" (google "Zohair Mohsen" and "Palestinian people" for more) for political ends, with the simple term "Israeli" to describe those who are citizens of the state of Israel.

So let's do it otherwise. Let's, more truthfully, talk about Arabs and Jews. Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Do the Jews, who come from the Middle East, and a million of whom in 1948, having endured for centuries the life of dhimmis under Muslim rule (save in those places, such as North Africa, where the brief rule by European powers led to Jewish emancipation from the burden of living under Shari'a -- thanks in Algeria to the loi Cremieux of 1870) left, and most fled to the state of Israel? Do the Jews have a right to a state, a state that can be defended against permanent Muslim aggression, or do they not?

And as for the local Arabs, whose numbers have been so exaggerated -- few bother to consult the Ottoman cadastral or demographic records, such as they are, in pronouncing on the subject of "Palestine" and fewer still put that "Palestine" and the non-Muslim and non-Arab minorities of the Middle East into their proper light, their proper perspective -- for the Kurds also, now is perhaps the time to add, have a right to an independent state, and Lebanon, by rights, should remain a haven, a final haven, for the Arabic-using Christians -- not all, by a long shot, are Arabs -- in the Middle East.

So there it is. A Jewish state, permanently imperiled, and asked to voluntarily make itself still more imperiled. And the implacable relentless Arabs, using salami tactics, and their vast unearned wealth, to apply every kind of pressure to get the world's Infidels to join in the gang-up, and to push Israel back to clearly indefensible borders, without control of vital aquifers, without control of traditional invasion routes, eight miles wide at its waist, from Qalqilya to the sea. And this is the one country, the only country, that the most persecuted tribe in human history, having recently been the victim of the most unbelievable crime in human history, that exists for that tribe to embody its national identity without any doubts or need to conform to what others would have.

And on the other hand, there are the Arabs, who having denied or attempted to deny every non-Muslim and non-Arab people in North Africa and the Middle East -- Kurds and Berbers and now blacks in Darfur and Christian Copts and Maronites and Assyrians and Chaldeans and others -- their rights, in some cases their linguistic and cultural rights, in others their rights to control or profit from their own natural resources, in still other cases, to enjoy freedom from Arab political masters -- and those Arabs have denied these peoples the right to speak their own non-Arab languages (see the case of the Berbers), retain their own culture, have even mass-murdered them in the Sudan and Iraq, with the other Arabs looking on, openly or silently supporting them, and blocking all attempts to stop the murder.

And those same Arabs, with their 22 states, have also been the beneficiaries of unmerited wealth, having nothing to do with their own efforts, their own industry or entrepreneurial flair. The rich Arabs and Muslims have received, for doing absolutely nothing, some ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone, and we all know the arms, and the luxurious palaces, and the call girls, and the yachts, and all the rest of it, that they have spent their money on, including the mosques and madrasas and Da'wa and propaganda on behalf of Islam -- through buying up journalists, creating academic centers, dangling possible contracts before greedy businessmen, and all the rest of it.

And you still wish to tell us you are morally neutral when it comes to Arabs and Jews in that little affair in a dusty sliver of land on the eastern littoral of the Mediterranean? You surely are not the moral idiot you have painted yourself to be. Surely you have not thought this all through. Surely history, including the last millennium or two, or at least back to the beginning of Islam's conquests and subjugations, and the fantastic story of what happened to the Jews, those who remained, and those who made their way out of the Middle East, should make some impression on you.

Assuming you are free of the usual mental pathology that explains so many cases of such "neutrality" in this case, one hopes you reconsider your declaration of "neutrality" -- as unacceptable a position as declaring moral neutrality between the Allies, and Nazi Germany, during World War II.

Paul Sperry interviews Rep. Sue Myrick at Investor's Business Daily:

The diminutive yet feisty Myrick, a former Charlotte mayor and now deputy Republican whip, sat down with IBD to discuss the zeitgeist inside official Washington concerning the war on Islamic terror.

IBD: What persuaded you to start the Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus, and what do you hope to accomplish?

Myrick: I decided to start the caucus out of a deep frustration, because President Bush does not talk to the American people about the long-term threat of radical Islamofascism infiltration in America. Since 9/11, I've tried to get the president and several members of his administration to talk to the American people about the dangerous enemy that we're facing. I took them all the materials I could find about what we did during World War II that were used to unite the American people. Everyone I spoke to said, "We do not want to frighten the American people."

I waited for someone else to start to educate the people, however, it did not seem to be happening. At that point, I sought to become educated on the matter. What I have learned is quite disturbing. I decided that if members of Congress were informed, they would have an opportunity to educate people in their districts. So I started the caucus and brought in three other co-chairs — Bud Cramer (D-Ala.), Kay Granger (R-Texas) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.).

We hope to start a dialogue with America. Until, and unless, we understand what we are fighting, we have no chance. We must inform the people, since it is evident they will have to protect their national sovereignty, because the government is not doing it.

IBD: How many members are in the caucus?

Myrick: We have 118 members — both Democrats and Republicans. The threat we face from radical Islamofascists is not a partisan issue. This is a matter that affects all Americans, regardless of political, social, economic or any other affiliations.

IBD: Should Americans be concerned about recently declassified documents detailing a secret plot by Islamist groups in this country, tied to the dangerous Muslim Brotherhood, to take over America from within, to Islamize our society?

Myrick: Americans must be concerned — alarmed. That is what I am referring to when I say that the administration has not explained who we are fighting and (where we are fighting them). "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" is not the whole story. It is amazing that we actually have the enemy's playbook, yet for some reason we don't want to seriously confront the threat we are facing.

The radical Islamofascists have told us how they intend to infiltrate all areas of our society and use the freedoms that are guaranteed under our Constitution to eventually Islamize our country, eliminate our Constitution and enact Shariah law. I know that it sounds a bit fanatical, but it's true.

In 1998, Osama bin Laden declared war on the U.S. What did we do? Nothing. Then he attacked again and again around the world before finally striking inside the U.S. Yet, rather than confront the threat head on and declare war on radical Islamofascists, we seek to placate the threat at home by saying radicals have hijacked Islam...

Those who find the concept of the Trinity impenetrable should try getting their heads round this:

Faced with Chinese plans to seize control of his reincarnation, the Dalai Lama has come up with two revolutionary proposals — either to forgo rebirth, or to be reborn while still alive.

The exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader proposed yesterday to hold a referendum among his 13-14 million followers around the world — before his death — on whether he should be reincarnated or not.

If the majority vote against it he said he would simply not be reborn, ending a lineage that tradition dictates dates back to the late 14th century, when a young shepherd was appointed the first Dalai Lama.

If the vote was in favour he said that he might appoint a reincarnation while he was still alive, breaking the 600-year-old tradition of being reborn as a small boy after his death.

This is a horny dilemma. I'd be in two minds about it - and if the Dalai Lama's followers vote for the second option, so will he.

From Rebecca's post here:

On my honor I will try to serve Allah and my country...

It's hard enough to serve God and Mammon.

"However, if Christians are only 3% of the city's [Mosul's] total population, they represent 35% of those with a higher education."
-- from this news article

What might one conclude from that? Anything? Nothing?

New Duranty: ...The exact number of Muslim girl scouts is unknown, especially since, organizers say, most Muslim scouts belong to predominantly non-Muslim troops. Minneapolis is something of an exception, because a few years ago the Girl Scout Council here surveyed its shrinking enrollment and established special outreach coordinators for various minorities. Some 280 Muslim girls have joined about 10 predominantly Muslim troops here, said Hodan Farah, who until September was the Scout coordinator for the Islamic community.

Nationally, the Boy Scouts of America count about 1,500 youths in 100 clubs of either Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts sponsored by Islamic organizations, said Gregg Shields, a spokesman for the organization.

The Girl Scouts’ national organization, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., has become flexible in recent years about the old trappings associated with suburban, white, middle-class Christian scouting. Many troops have done away with traditions like saying grace before dinner at camp, and even the Girl Scout Promise can be retooled as needed.

“On my honor I will try to serve Allah and my country, to help people and live by the Girl Scout law,” eight girls from predominantly Muslim Troop 3119 in Minneapolis recited on one recent rainy Sunday before setting off for a cookout in a local park...

One of the attractions of London was that the dialling code was 01. This was so much better than the dialling code for Bolton (0204) or even Manchester (061). Sadly, I was to be a loser in the telephone numbers game; by the time I moved here, the code had changed to 0171 for inner London and 0181 for outer London. At least I could could boast, for a time, of my centrality, being an 0171 person, but then it changed again. The code for London is now a bland 020, and our telephone numbers have eight further digits. I might as well be living in Weston-Super-Mare.

Can you imagine Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder answering the phone with a prosaic 7421 9308?

Today's Telegraph leader looks back on a time when men were men - and telephone numbers had style:

Whitehall 1212 is not the only telephone number that, like a long-forgotten smell, brings the atmosphere of the past flooding back.

Many of us have never forgotten our childhood number, or our first love's, from decades ago.

Now, as we report today, the nation's telephone numbers, from the year of the first directory, 1880, up to 1984, are to be available on the internet.

In the 1930s, if you wanted to ring that nice Mr Eliot who wrote the poems about cats, his name was there, at Paddington 8630, or that creepy Alfred Hitchcock's, at Frobisher 1339.

It's a brave celebrity today who keeps his name in the phone book.

Let's not get too nostalgic. This was an era when, at least in the films, the phone was always going dead, leaving the caller bashing away fruitlessly and inexplicably at the receiver cradle, shouting "Operator? Operator?" But I agree - our phone numbers are very impersonal. Not so, however, with mobile phones or phones with Caller ID. These phones display the name, and in the case of mobiles, even a picture of the caller. Things have come full circle.

Talking of circles, what do young people today think of when they say or hear the phrase "dial the number"? Telephones have not had dials for ages, although you still see them in icons of telephones used on companies' headed notepaper. Like "typesetter","dial" is  divorced from its origin, superseded by technology, but lingers on. The Germans future-proofed their word for "dial": it is "wählen" which has the general meaning "select". Perhaps, whenever a new invention comes in, we should consider whether any associated words will become as obsolete as the gadget itself. Seven Dials or Seventy Digits?

On the other hand, perhaps I should get a life. This may be my nerdiest post to date.