This week is National Vegan Week. Vegans, as I have said before, are whey-faced, cadaverous lunatics. In their favour it may be said that they are consistent, which vegetarians are not, and that they do not generally take up very much space on the planet. They are harmless to a fault. From the BBC:

The Vegan Society, which promotes a diet without any animal products, promises a "week of national celebration dedicated to cruelty-free living".

I’m not sure I like the idea of a cruelty-free life. Most of the best comedies involve a certain degree of cruelty – think of Borat. (I am glad that Americans have finally discovered Sacha Baron Cohen, famous in the UK for his black Muslim character Ali G, who did not travel as well. I remember Ali G challenging a vegetarian by saying: “Eat that chicken, or I kill another chicken.”) Think of Sybil in Fawlty Towers: “You handled that then, Basil?” Never mind comedy, think of King Lear: “What need one?” No, cruelty has to stay. I don’t want to inflict it (much), and I certainly don’t want to suffer it, but I like to witness it – at arm’s length, in an armchair.

According to vegans:

“humans use much less land and water if they eat crops directly rather than through the intermediary of an animal"

This may well be true, but I like my crops processed, with value added. Sirloin steak rather than the raw material, grass, which doesn’t cut the mustard. I once ate anteater – it tastes a bit like chicken – but I could not suppress the thought that I was indirectly eating ants. The anteater was not an effective intermediary.

Coincidentally, this week is also British Sausage Week.

Now that’s more like it.

This year's sausage-fest pin-up is Carol Thatcher, who is lending her hearty, no-nonsense image to a week of sausage-related promotions. As the promotion promises, "she doesn't mince her words".

Who wrote that joke? It’s really offal. Americans may not know that Carol Thatcher is the daughter of Margaret Thatcher, peace be upon her. Thatcher was fond of the sitcom Yes Minister, in one episode of which Jim Hacker battled against the Eurosausage, an attempt to standardise the British banger: 

"Our European enemies, or partners as they are referred to in public," Hacker notes, wish to refer to his favourite breakfast dish as the Emulsified High-Fat Offal Tube.

More on British Sausage Week:

The week's main event is the search for Britain's Supreme Sausage Sarnie, in which enthusiasts are invited to suggest their most creative and succulent combinations. Mind you, the week is being backed by the British Pig Executive, and the entry form small print says the meat must be "predominantly pork".

British Sausage Week sounds more like my kind of week than National Vegan Week. But why do we have to keep having these special weeks anyway? One week in August was National Allotment Week. Then there’s National Cat Week, National Take-Your-Dog-to-Work-Week, National Cancer Awareness Month and Islam Awareness Year. Actually, I made the last one up, but it will come sooner or later. I think we should have a National Nothing Day or a National Oblivion Day where we don’t think about, care about or remember anything. I’ll campaign for one, if I can be bothered.

From the website of the London Evening Standard an update on the Hamza Boy going underground.

A police investigation into the movements of Abu Hamza's son while he worked on the Underground has been launched.

A transport police source said: "There is concern and this is something we need to check but at present there is nothing to suggest there was any sinister motive."

Mohammed Kamel Mostafa, 25, from Wembley, gained security clearance despite serving three years in a Yemeni prison over a plot to bomb tourists. His pass, as a sub-contracted labourer for maintenance firm Tube Lines, gave him access to Jubilee line tunnels beneath Parliament.

Mostafa, who has recorded rap songs glorifying holy war and suicide attacks, worked nights and weekends. He was only sacked when colleagues realised he was the son of Hamza, 48, who was jailed for inciting murder and preaching hatred. 

A chip off the old block only their grandmother could love.

"The question directed this week to the National Security Council press office was straightforward: "Has the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani met with any American official, either military or civilian, since the U.S. invasion in 2003?" The answer reveals the extent to which the Bush administration is now, and always has been, out of its depth in Iraq." - from an article that appeared in The Bandar Beacon on October 27, 2006

What should have been an obvious question about why Sistani never ever met with Bremer or any American official save for Khalilzad (a Sunni but still a Muslim in Shi'a eyes -- the reverse is not always true), was not asked, in the so-called Major Media (Bandar Beacon, New Duranty Times, etc.), until a few days ago. No one wanted to puncture the balloon of comforting illusion. No one thought that perhaps the Shi’a Lobby that had been so successful, and that had a claque to applaud the Great Sistani at My Weekly Standard (Gerecht and Schwartz, especially) and also among certain Shi’a commentators such as the too-influential Fouad Ajami who, in his tellingly mistitled “The Foreigner’s Gift” – it should have been “The Infidel’s Gift” (and Ajami, if he reflects, will admit at least to himself the correctness of that observation) tells of how deeply impressed he was with Sistani, who of course had no objections to meeting with fellow Shi’a Ajami.

Now that the Shi’a Lobby has had its day (though Taheri, and Rend al-Rahim, and Vali Nasr, are still in there manfully pitching their woo), having through a whole series of charming and plausible and of course westernized and secularized and deeply unrepresentative men (Makiya, Chalabi, Allawi, and others) managed to charm and inveigle those making American policy to invade – as the Shi’a very much wanted – Iraq, and to make sure that nothing was done early on to prevent the transfer of power, through whatever means necessary (even that purple-thumbed affair, about which the Shi’a were so enthusiastic, and for such obvious, but apparently not obvious enough, reasons), it is the time of the Sunni Lobby to step forward.

And it is. Headed by Turki al-Faisal, ambassador of Saudi Arabia, ably assisted by James Baker whose Commission which will offer a face-saving way, if only Bush will take it, to get out of Iraq, but also offer the dreary and dangerous mixture as before, complete with doing the bidding of the Saudis, and making sure the Sunnis in Iraq are protected instead of welcoming the natural growth of Sunni-Shi’a hostilities, and not only in Iraq, and, not to be overlooked, the recommendation of renewing pressure on Israel by means of that idiotic, because ignorant of Islamic triumphalism, policy of pushing that "two-state solution" – a policy that squares with the four who make up that infamously windy “Quartet.”

Visitors to Jihad Watch knew all about this long ago, and were told serenely the truth about Sistani, even when the likes of Tom Friedman were suggesting that Sistani was just the man to receive the next Nobel Prize for Peace. Remember? Or have you forgotten?

If you have, here is one among many discussions of Sistani that sustained you all along:

MARCH 21, 2005

Fitzgerald: Sistani for Nobel?

"Everyone will have his own startling encounter with Islam -- the real thing, not what Muslim apologists, hoping to give everyone a carefully-circumscribed "peek into the Koran" (and let's make sure that none of these unwary Infidels manages to read anything beyond the Michael Sells "Approaching the Qur'an" and by all means, keep them from looking into the Hadith or the Sira), have on offer. It is almost always limited to highly selective quotation from the Qur'an. The Hadith, and the Sira -- sorry, off limits for now.

One keeps being surprised at how little people think they need to know before making grand pronouncements. Yesterday, amused by the latest display of vacuity and portentousness by Tom Friedman, nominating -- modestly -- Ali al-Sistani for the Nobel Prize -- I went to www.sistani.org to look around. There, between Sistani's complete banning of chess (and to think that checkmate is merely the Persian "shakh mat"), and his discussions of all the usual subjects that inquiring Muslims wish to know about, from whether it is okay to marry the sister of a man you have sodomized, or who has sodomized you (I forget which) to whether your canonical prayers count if you haven't performed the wudu (ablutions) correctly -- you know, all the stuff that you want to know, was something else, and that something was all about what is considered by Sistani and those who seek his guidance to be "Najis" or "unclean."
If you click on "Muslim Laws" on the left, and then, once a list comes up, click on "najis things," you will get a list -- #84 -- and if you then go a little further, and click on the menu where, among those unclean things, the "kafir" (which is to say, the Unbeliever, that is to say -- You and I, Dear Reader) you will get a further discussion of how, in the wonderful, "moderate" Islam of the al-Sistani variety, the Unbeliever, the Infidel, the Kafir (guilty of "kufr" or "ingratitude" for failing to receive the Revelation of the Last of the Prophets in the right, accepting, submissive way) is viewed.

So here, for everyone out in Ames, Iowa, is just a little sample of what you are missing, and what one suspects that Mohammed Fahmy, and Tariq Ramadan, and Hamid Dabashi, and Zeinab Bahrani, and a cast of hundreds of millions, would prefer that you not inquire into too deeply. And please, whatever you do, in order to accommodate them, at least promise that you will NOT read the websites www.dhimmitude.org and www.faithfreedom.org and www.co-jet.org and www.jihadwatch.org, and certainly do NOT read anything by Bat Ye'or, but especially do not read "Islam and Dhimmitude" or "The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam." And do not read Ibn Warraq's "Why I Am Not a Muslim." And let's not even talk about Robert Spencer. These books will only confuse you. And never pay attention to a man named Ali Sina or any of those ex-Muslims who appear at his website. Never google the name "Habib Malik" to read what he has to say about the historic relationship of Islam to Christianity; never read a similar article by James V. Schall, a professor at Georgetown; never take a peek at Western scholars of Islam whose work may be sampled in the anthology The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew Bostom.

Here is what you can find at www.sistani.org:

"84. The following ten things are essentially najis: 1. Urine 2. Faeces 3. Semen 4. Dead body 5. Blood 6. Dog 7. Pig 8. Kafir 9. Alcoholic liquors 10. The sweat of an animal who persistently eats najasat [i.e., unclean things].

108. The entire body of a Kafir, including his hair and nails, and all liquid substances of his body, are najis.

109. If the parents, paternal grandmother and paternal grandfather of a minor child are all kafir, that child is najis, except when he is intelligent enough, and professes Islam. When, even one person from his parents or grandparents is a Muslim, the child is Pak (The details will be explained in rule 217).

110. A person about whom it is not known whether he is a Muslim or not, and if no signs exist to establish him as a Muslim, he will be considered Pak. But he will not have the privileges of a Muslim, like, he cannot marry a Muslim woman, nor can he be buried in a Muslim cemetery."

So who wants to second the nomination of Al-Sistani for the Nobel Prize? Anyone out there in Ames, Iowa?"

From The Telegraph.

"Our leader has shown the US what a strong nation we are." North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, is heading a mass victory campaign to celebrate the testing of the nation's first nuclear bomb, despite universal condemnation and the threat of sanctions.

In a series of rallies in the capital, Pyongyang, hundreds of thousands of people have been marshalled to glorify the nation's achievement. The nation may struggle to feed itself and regularly runs out of electricity, but on the first visit by a British journalist since the nuclear test early last month, it was clear that ordinary North Koreans, as well as the Government, were in defiant mood.

I (Peter Simpson of the Telegraph) spent four days in Pyongyang as part of a foreign business delegation. None of the Western doubts expressed about the test have surfaced here. There is instead the determination of a people ready to face whatever is thrown at them. "The US wants to invade but our leader has shown that we are strong," said one proud resident. "We are a powerful nation. We will survive any sanctions."

Reports from South Korea - still technically at war with the North since the Korean War ended in 1953 - said its neighbour had stepped up border security to prevent intelligence being leaked after the Oct 9 test. The continuing celebrations came as Pyongyang yesterday agreed to return to the "six-party talks" with South Korea, China, America, Russia and Japan, aimed at ending its nuclear programme. Although the talks have dragged on for three years, the decision was welcomed by Washington.

 But a British official said North Korea was on a knife-edge, uncertain what effect sanctions, the exact nature of which are still being debated by the United Nations, would have. "It's not certain the North Koreans have enough food for this winter," he said.

I remember seeing pictures last year of obviously starving children in a government day nursery - their parents were in work, but still could not feed their babies. That's no way to run a country. Lots of links if you follow to the original article. Update Thursday 2 November - this is particularly interesting.

Driving the streets of post-Stalinist Pyongyang is just like time travel

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday ordered the lifting of joint U.S.-Iraqi military checkpoints around the Shiite militant stronghold of Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad — another apparent move to assert his authority with the Americans and appeal to his Shiite support base. - from this news item

This countermands the American directive and the cordon which was intended to help American soldiers find the Iraqi-born translator who may have been kidnapped.

Again and again Maliki has shown an indifference to American desires. He was preparing some months ago to offer amnesty to those “insurgents” who had killed "only" American soldiers, until an outcry in this country forced the Bush Administration to tell him he couldn’t do it. He expects the Americans to fight and die for his regime, a regime like the previous one is prepared to soak the Americans for all they are worth, all the billions they can provide (and how many former high Iraqi officials siphoned off how many billions, paid for by American taxpayers most of whom will never know the high life now to be enjoyed, for the rest of their lives, by those “Iraqi” patriots who made out like gangbusters on American aid, and are now living it up, outside Iraq, or in Europe, possibly attending the same defiles on the Avenue Montaigne as Suha Arafat).

He is not, and cannot be, a “friend of America.” He is willing to endure the American presence only so long as it strengthens him, and weakens the Sunni insurgents. And the Sunnis, in turn, or those not in the immediate “insurgency,” may now want the Americans to stay for the same reasons – in order to protect them from the full force of the Shi’a. That’s it. That the Administration refuses to understand this, and keeps making policy based on hope, and on all the Unrepresentative Men (Chalabi, Allawi, Makiya, and the tiny group of semi-decent mid-level former Iraqi officers who have unduly impressed American officers, and thus lead them to all kinds of rosy misconceptions and hopes, but are in fact the rare exceptions, not the rule) that were in exile, or have tried with this or that group of soldiers or policemento do the impossible in Iraq, which is to make them drop their sectarian and ethnic and even tribal allegiances. Simply cannot be done.

Why is this hard to understand? What is so complicated about it?

Why is Maliki, why are any Iraqis, allowed to interfere with American military decisions undertaken to protect or recover its soldiers? Why, for that matter, did Bush ever say that "we will leave" when "the Iraqis" tell us "they are ready to have us leave." When, in the history of the American government, did a President say that "we will leave when the locals are good and ready to have us leave." An incredible attitude, a complete abdication of responsibilty. And if it not the "Iraqis" then it is "the generals" who will tell me about what tactics to employ.

But what if it is not the "tactics" that concern the generals, but the strategy? What if "the genrals" wish to tell Bush the one thing he will not let them tell him -- that he has the wrong policy in Iraq, that we should be exploiting these ethnic and sectarian tensions, not trying to end them. Of course they won't. They haven't been permitted to think for themselves in this area, haven't allowed themselves to learn about Islam and to realize that the "war on terror" is a dangerous misnomer, or to think about the other instruments of war -- propaganda, counter-Da'wa, stopping the demograpohic conquest of the countries of the Western alliance, of NATO -- no, this one cannot expect of them. But one can expect that the way in which Bush has palmed off responsibilities on both the Iraqis and on the American generals, but not permitted any questioning by the latter of his policy, permitting only advice on the tactics by which his stated aims (that "victory" we hear so much about, that damned "victory" in the "war on terror"), ludicrous and self-defeating and wasteful and impossible of achievement as they are, are supposed to be attained.

A nightmare.

Anti-Bush Activist in Osama Bin Laden Halloween Costume

"The lawyer who divulged President Bush's drunken-driving arrest days before the 2000 election was arrested Tuesday after he was spotted on a highway overpass wearing an Osama bin Laden Halloween costume and holding a toy gun," the AP reports.

Tom Connolly, 49, was charged with criminal threatening, a misdemeanor, and was released after posting $500 bail. He said he intends to plead not guilty. "There was a First Amendment this morning when I woke up. I don't know how it evaporated with the dawn," Connolly, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor in 1998, told reporters after his release. Police said the costume included plastic dynamite, grenades, and a replica of an AK-47 assault rifle.

"The whole thing is just incredibly bizarre," said Police Chief Ed Googins. "It just crossed the line." The chief said there was no way to tell from a distance if the gun was real or fake.

Connolly also was carrying a sign that said "I love TABOR," a reference to the Taxpayer Bill of Rights on the Maine ballot, but at least one person who saw it thought it said "I love the Taliban," Googins said.

What does seem clear from this episode is where his sympathizes lie and why he wanted Bush to lose the election.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on International Policy has asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to consider measures that would help improve the deteriorating situation for Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq. - from this news item

This northern preserve can and should be a semi-autonomous region, connected to an independent Kurdistan. Unlike the Arabs, the Kurds have another identity, other than Islam, to appeal to, and their mistreatment by the Arabs (including the mass murder of the al-Anfal campaign, which elicited not a syllable of protest from any Arab government or the Arab League, or indeed from any Arabs at all, save for Kanan Makiya and possibly another writer or two publishing in London). Many Kurds are genuinely and not unfeignedly grateful, and possibly for quite a while -- for the American protection against Iraqi air power from 1991 to 2003, and for the removal of Kurd-murdering Saddam Hussein and his Arab regime. If Sunni-Shi’a strife could preoccupy the Arabs, this would give the Kurds their best chance to achieve an independnet Kurdistan, and that independent Kurdistan, in turn, would or could inspire Kurds in Iran and possibly Syria to revolt, and not only Kurds in Iran, but also other non-Persian minorities -- Baluchis, Arabs in Khuzistan, Azeris. Thus an independent Kurdistan would threaten in different ways both Iran and Syria. And an independent Kurdistan would also not go unnoticed by Berbers in North Africa, especially in the Kabyle, or for that matter by Berber immigrants to France, who make up most of the membership of the secular groups such as "maghrebins laiques" (and who, to the extent that they can be encouraged to regard Arabs with hostility, are more likely to collaborate with the French security services, and even, perhaps, in France, to jettison Islam altogether).

The problem for the American government is that it cannot be flexible, cannot admit to itself that the original policy in Iraq --- to do everything possible to keep the country together, to force the Kurds to remain within an "Iraq" that most cannot bear to endure any longer -- was wrong. Partly it is a matter of simply wanting to save face, of not being able to take in new information -- about Islam, about the islamization of Europe that is far more threatening than anything that happens, or does not happen, in Iraq and the Muslim Arab states. And partly it reflects the want of imagination and timidity that inhibits American policy -- especially, in this case, timidity towards Turkey.

But it is perfectly possible, given that the United States would be the diplomatic and military supporter of Kurdistan, for the American government to extract from that government a promise not to make territorial demands on Turkey (with Iran and Syria, however, the sky's the limit), on threat of having all military supplies cut. And then the government of Turkey, in turn, would not be asked but told that the American government would be the guarantor of Turkey's borders, and that instead of threatening to invade Kurdistan, the Turkish government should see the wisdom of acquiescence, and of using this new nation-state as a vehicle for weakening both Syria and the Iranian menace.

And there is one other promise to be extracted from the Kurds. And that is that the Kurds must guarantee the continued existence, and help to protect against the Arabs, Sunni or Shi'a, a Chaldo-Assyrian autonomous region, that would be created in northern Iraq, and to which Christians who do not flee elsewhere, could move and retain their ways, their customs, their traditions, and Christianity would still have a presence, albeit a reduced one, in Iraq. During the past century, constant pressure of Muslims has reduced the power and presence of non-Muslims in all the Muslim lands -- Christians in Lebanon and Turkey and North Africa and Egypt have suffered declines in power and relative numbers, and in the same way, for the same reasons, Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been harried, persecuted, driven out, murdered.

It may be that Christians will wish to leave Iraq altogether, and try to swell the ranks of Christians elsewhere in the Middle East -- perhaps Lebanon would be the best choice, now that Syria's Alawite despot, baby Assad, has apparently thrown in his lot with the Shi'a of Iran, and of Lebanon, and even permitted Shi'a missionaries to work among not only the Sunnis (understandable from his point of view) but also (and this is amazing) among the Alawites, those entirely unorthodox Muslim worshippers of Mary, as well.

There is one more possibility, mentioned here on many occasions. That is to provide for a continued Christian presence in the Holy Land (right now it is only the government of Israel that guarantees continued Christian access, and the Israelis are under a state of permanent siege, that Lesser Jihad conducted against it that has no, can have, no end) by moving some Assyrians and Chaldeans to the "West Bank."

Room would be made for them, and the Israeli government agree, only if there were to be the kind of population exchange that that took place between Hindus and Muslims at Partition in 1947-48, or between Greeks and Turks in 1922. Arabic-speaking (but non-Arab) Christians from Iraq would settle in those places from which Arab Muslims, who could hardly be pleasant neighbors for those fleeing Muslim Arab persecution, would be removed, to go to the Arab Muslim country of their choice -- Jordan, or for that matter western Iraq, to swell the ranks of the Sunnis, and possibly to dream of sharing in that oil wealth that, of course, will never come to them if they continue to live, and plot, in the place so absurdly renamed the "West Bank."

Hamas wants to "liberate the Palestinians," not to destroy Israel, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.  - from this news item

Solana, Patten, Mary Robinson, Miguel Moratinos, Prodi in his previous EU incarnation -- they are the very worst that European political life produces, and of course they end up in, and rise high within, the bureacracy of the E.U., a project that entails minimizing or even effacing differences among nation-states, by minimizing or even effacing in some casees nationalist loyalties, national languages, literatures, and histories. A monstrous idea, monstrously implemented.

Solana is at the top of the list. He is stupid. His stupidity, or certitude about things he does not know and about which he does not wish to know -- he's rather bet the entire future of the West on his expressed need to "hope" -- is of the kind impervious to new information, impervious to reason working on that new information. This kind of stupidity grades by degrees into cruelty and evil. That is the kind Solana possesses, or that oppresses Solana. And it is the same with many of the other E.U. and U.N. bureaucrats, present or past, listed above.

"The bottom line is that American aid is the single most important action the people of the three largest Muslim countries want from the United States," writes Ken Ballen, TFT president, in the report's executive summary. "And here's the key to winning hearts and minds: deeper American assistance directly to the people, following their expressed priorities."-- from this news article

Absolute idiocy. Palpable, obvious, total idiocy.

It is absurd to think that Muslim hearts and minds can be won. They can be rented, not bought, and rented only for the shortest of periods. Meanwhile, the rent -- that is the further transfer of wealth from the Camp of the Infidels to the Camp of Islam -- only helps to pay for mosques, madrasas, world-wide campaigns of Da'wa, armies of Western hirelings who conduct public relations and disinformation efforts on behalf of Saudi Arabia, the Arabs and Muslims more generally, and Islam.

Sixty billion dollars has been given by successive American governments to Egypt. Egypt today has still failed to honor any of its solemn commitments under the Camp David Accords (save for that not to engage in open warfare, a commitment that it keeps for the same reason that Syria does not attack Israel -- because of the likely consequences). Tens of billions have over many decades gone from the American government to Pakistan, a country whose military actively encouraged A. Q. Khan in his theft from Western laboratories of nuclear secrets and his subsequent effort to share those secrets with, inter alia, North Korea and Iran. That same Pakistan was not deterred by Western aid from nurturing the Taliban, and then helping its fighters to take over Afghanistan, giving diplomatic and other kinds of support, nor in today, Janus-faced, continuing to protect or support the Taliban members in Pakistan. The billions sent by European countries and the United States to the "Palestinian" Authority has been used to fill the private coffers of Arafat and then of his widow, and his associates, and to allow them to live in luxury in apartments bought outside the area, and also to the subventions to a dozen different groups of armed men, so-called "security services," all of which are dedicated to attacking Israel in any way they can, whatever jostling for money and power among themselves they may also engage in.

Where is the evidence that more such payments will help, since there is not the slightest evidence that the payment of a disguised Jizyah does anything except encourage Muslim attitudes that this Infidel aid must be given, is given as a duty, and what is even more sinister, the Infidel donors behave as if this is indeed the case -- that they cannot stop such payments for fear of the reaction of the Muslim donees.

This is madness from top to bottom. That some in the government think this way, even for a second, shows how little they comprehend of Islam, of its unambiguous tenets and the natural attitudes that flow from them, in any society suffused with Islam. And the ignorance of so much history, some 1350 years of it, and over such a wide swath of different territories once held by so many different peoples, all of them conquered and subjugated, and forced to endure the status of dhimmi -- up until the last half of the 19th century, when Western power forced a change upon a most reluctant Ottoman Empire, and in Muslim countries today, the reversion to persecution of non-Muslims has everywhere led to a great reduction in their numbers -- in the Arab countries (both Jews and Christians have left), and in Pakistan and Bangladesh (where it is primarily Hindus whose percentage of the population has gone down to about a fifth, in Bangladesh, and a tenth, in Pakistan, of what it was at Partition). Then there is the slow demographic conquest of Malaysia, where Muslims now lord it over HIndus and Chinese, and force the local indigenous tribes to accept Islam wherever possible. And the persecution of Christians in the Moluccas, and East Timor, and of Hindus in all the islands where they continue to live except, possibly, Bali, and sometimes even there, shows that even in supposedly "moderate" Indonesia the mistreatment of non-Muslims continues.

It is not right that those whose ignorance explains their policy prescriptions should be listened to with respect, should be listened to at all. They have no right to make the rest of us, to make the entire Western world, suffer because they cannot spare the time, or lack the intelligence, to study and to comprehend Islam as a total system.

They should be mocked out of whatever offices, and whatever power or unearned authority, they may currently be said to possess.

Muslim states are not and cannot be our friends. Every once in a while their interests, and ours, may superficially coincide. Saudi Arabia wished the Soviet Army to be defeated in Afghanistan, and so did the United States. But each had reasons completely different from the other. Saudi Arabia wanted the Soviet Army defeated because it was an army of Infidels. The United States wanted the Soviet Army defeated because it was the military force of the Soviet Union, the most powerful Communist power. The American government was against the totalitarianism that Communist power in the Soviet Union embodied. The Saudi government had no objection at all to totalitarian belief-systems as long as those belief-systems consist of Islam, Islam, Islam -- it was merely Infidel Russia, or its avatar the Soviet Union, that was the enemy, that had to be defeated. After that defeat, the Americans paid little attention to the rise of the deplorable Taliban, which finally they saw, too late, as a threat to the liberal democracies of the West. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, saw nothing wrong with the Taliban and indeed recognized the Taliban regime (aside from Saudi Arabia, only the U.A.E. and Pakistan did so).

We don't need to win them over. We need to diminish their power, especially their financial power, and to exploit the natural fissures, sectarian and ethnic and economic, that already exist, and permanently, within the Camp of Islam. That this is not discussed, that this is not even considered, astounds. No one in the history of warfare has ever decided to abjure playing upon the weaknesses of the enemy.

But, of course, the "enemy" has not been identified correctly. In the lemming atmosphere of official Washington, or of the chanceries of the West, the "enemy" is "terror" and the fight is that "war on terror" of which we have heard quite enough.

That's it. Constrain Islam. It won't change, or it won't change for a hundred years if ever. How could it? The canonical texts are immutable. The Qur'an is the uncreated word of God. Nothing can be changed. The hadith cannot be rewritten or assigned new ranks of authenticity, not after more than a thousand years of authority cling to Bukhari and Muslim. The figure of Muhammad cannot be changed, the details of his life that Muslims find so inspiring cannot be changed.

Why is this so hard to comprehend? It is so hard because the difficulties it suggests are just beyond the wit and imagination of so many to begin to think of ways of dealing with, that they prefer to pretend that the problem isn't there, to wish or deny it away. It is possibly the most fantastic situation in the history of conflict, possibly the most threatening situation in the entire history of the West.

Who will come to his senses? How many? And when?

I'm sorry to report, though, that all the doubts my paleocon friends voice about Mark ended up at the front of my mind.  There are too many contradictions in his outlook.  Minimal govt. at home, but a huge imperialist effort at spreading our values abroad?  Well, it worked for the Victorian Brits, but that was then—when, as Mark himself points out many times, the demographic balance was all different.  Heck, everything was all different.  Like many another, Mark is dazzled to blindness by the example of the British Empire.  Note to Mark:  It was a one-off.

At the end of the book Mark says we have three options:  submission to Islam, the destruction of Islam, or the reform of Islam.  Just so, just so. 

Now I have to get on with doing the things I should have been doing all morning, at triple speed. 

Sometime in the 1970s, the "In Memoriam" section on the Obituary Page of The Times -- often the most interesting and least tendentious part of the paper --there appeared, not on Keats's birthday, October 31, but on the day of his death, February 23, of tuberculosis, in his rooms overlooking the right side (looking hopefully up) of the Spanish Steps, the following:

Keats, John. I always made an awkward bow.

Nothing else. Just the name, and the last sentence of his last letter, written in Rome to Charles Brockden Brown on November 30, 1820.

Who called The Times in advance of the death-day, who paid for the petite annonce, in order to honor Keats and remind us of him and literature and everything else, merely by reprinting without comment Keats's own laconic and haunting farewell? I had to know. I called the paper. Nobody knew. Nobody offered to find out.

Captains and kings have come and gone. Communism has receded. Islam is on its menacing as-yet uncomprehended and therefore unimpeded march. Who's in, who's out, and what's to come -- all still unsure.

And I still don’t know who placed that tribute to Keats in The Times. Thus this Notes-and-Queries request, in the seine of the Net, so that someone who knows someone may see this, and that sought someone may at last be identified and, though he (or she) needs no thanks, thanked.

Thanks to John Utting for this:

“A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine,” said Antheme Brillat Savarin.

I am a dedicated trencherwoman. I love my food and wine, and am one of the least likely candidates for teetotalism, vegetarianism, anorexia, Atkins, food combining or any other absurd form of life-denial. London, not Paris, has the best restaurants in the world. England, not France, boasts the top wine tasters, so I am well placed to eat my fill. Phil likes his food too.

But what a lot of twaddle is talked about food and wine. Wine first. I have been on a wine tasting course and I know that not all language used about wine is pretentious: flinty, mineral, farmyard, apricot, damson, cherries, gooseberries, leathery, woody, mushroomy, tannic, acid, balanced, finish, crisp, buttery, oaky, flabby – all these words and more, mean something.

Yes, I admit that a good wine needs to open up, you need to chew it round your mouth and tannin cuts through red meat. However, when somebody tells you that the grape has “sulked on the vine”, you know they are showing off. Here are a few more examples from the Tim Atkin in the Observer:

'There are few things more pleasant in life,' claims Serena Sutcliffe in her Wines of Burgundy, 'than trying to decide if the Bienvenues, the Bâtard or the unbelievable Chevalier is reminiscent of hawthorn, blackthorn or May blossom.'…

There may be more pleasant things, but I wouldn’t like to say either way.

If this tasting note sounds more than a little pretentious, what about the sort of thing published by Robert Parker, America's leading wine guru? Here's Mr P's information-rich description of a Barossa Shiraz with a flammable 16.5 per cent alcohol. 'This wine, which lasted four days in the bottle before I decided to pass the balance through my bowels, displays an opaque black/purple colour and exotic coffee, chocolate, Asian spice, roast duck and blackberry and prune liqueur-like aromas. To say the wine is unctuously textured is an understatement. This wine looks like 10-W-40 motor oil.' Believe it or not, he gave the wine 99 points out of 100….

Different nations describe wines in different ways. The French, for example, are very keen on the term sous-bois (undergrowth). They are also fond of sensual terms like séducteur, viril and tendre. Mind you, they never get as racy as the male Australian lecturer I once heard describe a wine as 'long, firm and full in the mouth like a penis'.

Mwwwmmphh. So this is why professional wine tasters spit, rather than swallow. And how does he know?

And now to food. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whose extended tea-making rituals featured in this column a few weeks ago, warns against a kitchen that boasts basil and tells us to get with the programme:

Sea kale is the new asparagus
Brussels tops are the new greens (it's a Europe thing)
Parsley is the new basil
Haut Savoie is the new Serrano (which was of course, the old Parma)
Tatsoi is the new Mizuna (which is still the new rocket)
Breadsticks are the new baguettes
Papardelle is the new ravioli
Agen (oil) is the new olive (oil)
Mousse is the new ice cream
Pears are the new apples
Juice is the new wine
Tequilas are the new single malts
Potatoes are the new tomatoes
Gravy is the new jus
John Dory is the new sea bass
Fish is the new meat
Meat is the new bread
Bread is the new cheese
Cheese is the new chicken
Chicken is the new fish

The prize, however, must go to his assertion that mushy is the new al dente. This may not be good news for Phil, above. For more on this phrase and a sideways (or sidewalk) look at naughty pasta, see this exchange here. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

WND: The Pentagon must study the Muslim prophet Muhammad and his military doctrine to beat the growing number of jihadists, a former senior Pentagon intelligence official warns.

The failure of Pentagon brass to implement a "systematic study" of Muhammad's military doctrine is hurting the U.S. military's effort to control and defeat insurgents and terrorists, complains William Gawthrop, who until recent months headed a key counterintelligence and counterterrorism program set up at the Pentagon after 9/11...

"If the United States, moderate Muslim governments and the non-Muslim world seek to engage ideological adversaries on their own ground," he said, "they will have to develop, use and maintain the full range of capabilities in the ideological component of national power, and address Islam's strategic themes directly."

This begs the question, why is Gawthrop a "former" senior Pentagon intelligence official? Rumsfeld has embraced the "it's all so complicated and there are hundreds of parameters by which to measure success" non-strategy strategy. But the simple truth is, there is no strategy in the overall war, the battle for civilization. Gawthrop might possibly have pointed this out.

"I'm almost afraid to ask.. are those *actual* courses they teach?"
-- from a reader

Ask, and ye shall be told.

No.

But they might as well be.

"Armstrong would never pass a graduate seminar at Weston or Harvard Div...."
-- from a reader

Really? What if these were her seminars:

1. Feminism and Islam: The Search for Common Ground (Prof. Leila Ahmed)
2. Beyond the Church, Beyond the Synagogue: America and the Pluralism Project (Prof. Diana Eck)
3. Sufism as Ritual, Sufism as Worship (Prof. William A. Graham)
4. Islam For A New World (Prof. Tariq Ramadan, Visiting Professor of European Islam Studies)
5. Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira (not given in 2006-2010; may possibly be given in 2011, if budget permits)
6. What the Occupation Does to the Soul of Israel (Bishop Thomas Shaw) -- cross-registration with the Weston School of Theology

I suspect Karen Armstrong would do quite well in seminars #1, 2, 3, 4, and especially 6. About #5, I doubt that it will ever be on offer. But if those budgetary constraints ever loosen , and seminar #6 ever materializes, don't expect the teacher or the students to focus on the Qur'anic passages, and Hadith stories, and details of Muhammad's life, that are helping make news headlines, and disrupting entire societies in the lands of the Infidels, all around this giddy globe. No, such a course will either be taught by a Muslim apologist who is a Muslim, or a non-Muslim apologist such as Esposito or, if one really must have a non-Muslim teaching the course, it will be someone who will offer only the narrowest, most forbidding, most Germanic, most philological, least lively and relevant of approaches, and the course will attract a total enrollment of three ((two of them Muslim and native speakers of Arabic, the third an enthusiastic Japanese exchange-student for whom the course might as well be taught in Sorbian or Mayalam), save for the year when Karen Armstrong, that enthusiast, signs up -- not a moment too soon -- to find out what this Qur'an that one hears so much about really contains.

The Telegraph: Researchers exposed Happy, Maxine and Patty - all adult Asian females at the Bronx Zoo in New York - to a square eight-ft mirror and discovered that they were aware that they were looking at their own reflections.

And in the case of Happy, she also touched a mark on her head which she could not have otherwise seen.

In this way, elephants have joined a small, elite group of species - including humans, great apes and dolphins - that have the ability to recognise themselves in the mirror...

For years many people assumed that because dolphins have such large brains, they must have intelligence on par with humans, but my brother, who is a dolphin expert, tells me they actually use only one half of their brain at a time while they sleep the other half. Obviously, if they went to sleep they way most animals do, they would forget to come up for air.  Dolphins are conscious breathers, unlike humans and other animals who breathe automatically and unconsciously, and so must remain awake in at least half of their brains at a time. File under: interesting bits of animal trivia.