I'm coming to the conclusion that the Italians are better than the French, even at what the French do well: food, wine and looking good. 

Take food. My experience may not be typical, but my three favourite French restaurants are run by Italians. The food is excellent, and the waiters are not stuck up and arrogant, as French waiters are.

What about wine? I must concede that the best of the best wine is French, but the next best is Italian, and it comes at a much more reasonable price and with less snobbery.

As for looking good, Carla Bruni is the perfect Frenchwoman. She is stylish and beautiful - chic if you must - but without that miserable, haughty look that chic Frenchwomen have. She actually looks happy; a Frenchwoman of comparable looks would appear neurotic and strained with the effort of keeping them. And Italian men are vain about their appearance, certainly, but they are not precious about it, nor are they strangers to soap and water.

So, what are the French for?

Easy. The French exist to amuse the English and to give us an opportunity to make sweeping, possibly unfair generalisations like the above. That is why Anthony Peregrine, writing in The Telegraph, misses the point when he "examines some of the more persistent clichés about French life". The clichés are the point, perhaps the only point, of French life:

The French are... well, what are they? Twenty-three miles away, our nearest neighbours and oldest enemies. No other nation stirs such conflicting emotions in the British breast.

Conflicting emotions? There is no conflict in this particular British breast.

The French are cultural snobs

Granted, it is irritating to hear the French going on about Beaumarchais, Marivaux, Racine and Molière when we know perfectly well that the world would chuck all four off a raft to save Shakespeare. But it’s also rather touching - especially as, on our side of the Channel, everyone is currently in such a lather trying to define Britishness.

The French don’t bother with such questions. They know what Frenchness is. It’s an accumulation of their history, thought, arts and food - all wrapped up into a sort of “Project France”.

[...]

All Frenchmen wear berets and hooped shirts and ride bikes festooned with onions

No they don’t. Our cartoon image of the typical Français derives entirely from the Onion Johnnies. From the 19th-century to the 1960s, these guys sailed from Brittany, put on berets and pedalled round Britain peddling the celebrated pink onions of Roscoff. A handful are apparently still at it. They imprinted themselves upon the nation’s psyche at a time when most ordinary people never encountered any other sort of French person.

Non-Roscoff Frenchmen nevertheless remain puzzled beyond measure that we regularly depict them all as onion-toting cyclists. It’s as if they considered all Britons to be lobster fishermen, portraying us eternally with sou’westers and lobster pots. Should you wish to know more about the Onion Johnnies, visit La Maison des Johnnies, 48 rue Brizeux, Roscoff.

I thought an Onion Johnny was a kind of French letter.

The French say “Ooh-la-la” a lot

Indeed they do, but not as we imagine they do. First, they say it quite quickly, as one word (with a long first syllable, a long third syllable and a rapid “la” in the middle), not slowly and as three separate words, as we tend to parody them. Second, it is not necessarily, or even usually, an expostulation of delighted surprise at some frothily extravagant naughtiness. It is used much more often to indicate that one is impressed — by anything at all: a fine coq-au-vin, a particularly crunchy rugby tackle or the extent of the damage to someone else’s car. Quite how the phrase acquired its salacious overtones in our minds, I’m not sure. Certainly not from the French. Unlike us, they aren’t surprised by sex. Nudity (indeed, porn) on television, whores on country roads, adultery in high places: they’re all just part of the landscape.

So the French are impressed by a fine coq? Ooh-la-la.

USAToday: WASHINGTON — Thefts and illegal exports of advanced military night-vision gear are rising sharply, and U.S. officials say some of the devices have reached enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they could erode the edge U.S. troops have in after-dark combat.

The government has prosecuted more than two dozen businesses and individuals over the past 18 months for stealing night-vision gear or skirting prohibitions on foreign sales, according to a USA TODAY review of federal documents and public records.

Could these possibly be Muslims and Muslim-owned businesses?

In at least five cases, prosecutors linked shipments to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. A few others were headed to Iran and Taliban forces in Afghanistan, court records show; several were destined for China and Japan.

"It's extremely serious — you're talking about adversaries of the United States getting equipment that we make to give our soldiers an advantage in the field," says Charles Beardall, the Pentagon's deputy inspector general for investigations....

Pelak and Beardall say some night-vision gear has reached enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan but won't discuss how much. "Night-vision goggles of some generation have been found" on foes and in weapons caches, Beardall says, but details are "very sensitive." The implications are serious because U.S. troops often launch riskier missions after dark to exploit their night-vision advantage.

"If you look at cases where groups like the Taliban are trying to get this stuff, that's how they want to use it, for night operations to kill our troops," Pelak says.

Lower-grade night-vision devices are sold commercially, but military versions are far more sensitive and can include features that identify U.S. troops by infrared tabs on their uniforms. Sales and exports of that equipment are restricted by law.

Since 2001, the government has charged more than 40 individuals or businesses with theft or illegal exports of night-vision technology, based on a USA TODAY review of public records and reports from Justice, Commerce and the Pentagon. Besides the two dozen cases prosecuted since late 2006, the newspaper also identified at least eight more under investigation.

In one case, Syed Hashmi, a U.S. citizen, awaits trial on charges that he obtained night-vision goggles and other military devices for associates who moved the equipment to al-Qaeda affiliates for use against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In another case, Shahrazad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian, was sentenced this month to 29 months in prison for her role in a plot to send 3,000 night-vision systems to Iran, which the United States accuses of supplying Iraqi insurgents.

A U.S. citizen and and Iranian - what could they possibly have in common? Whatever it is, USAToday isn't telling.

This Financial Times editorial is typical of people who blame Israel for being under seige by the Arabs when it is in fact Islam that makes this reality inevitable.

The Republican congressional candidate lost in a special election in Mississippi Tuesday leading to some soul searching among Republicans and raising fears about November. They are looking at ways to distance themselves from Bush mainly on the economy while ignoring immigration and Iraq - the twin millstones McCain willingly placed around his own neck. Here's New Duranty:

But Mr. McCain’s advisers said the Mississippi race underlined his intention to distance himself as much as possible from Congressional Republicans. Mr. McCain has already been openly critical of some of President Bush’s strategies.

The level of distress was evident in remarks by senior party officials throughout the day.

“This was a real wake-up call for us,” Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues. We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives and co-opt the middle and win these elections. We have to get the attention of our incumbents and candidates and make sure they understand this.”

Representative Tom Davis, Republican of Virginia and former leader of his party’s Congressional campaign committee, issued a dire warning that the Republican Party had been severely damaged, in no small part because of its identification with President Bush. Mr. Davis said that, unless Republican candidates changed course, they could lose 20 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate.

“They are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall, if steps are not taken to remedy the current climate,” Mr. Davis said in a memorandum. “The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than it was in 2006.”...

“The Republican brand is down, and it is going to be hard to get it back,” said Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California....

Scott Reed, a former chief of staff to the Republican National Committee, said the defeat would dampen fund-raising. “Republican leadership needs to really take a good look in the mirror,” Mr. Reed said. “They’re taking the party off the cliff.”...

Obama is looking less like George McGovern and more like Jimmy Carter all the time.

Not everyone on the Financial Times is ignorant of Islam, and therefore of how it explains the  Jihad against Israel. I know of at least one person there who knows what's what about Islam, and some day his time will come.

But whoever wrote this editorial is not one of them, and the piece radiates with the shallow maliciousness that one by now has come to expect, from so many sources, whenever the subject of Israel is treated. The pink-sheeted Financial Times is also heavily dependent on Arab clients for advertising -- Arab banks, multi-page ads for the wonders of Dubai or Qatar or "economic towns" in thrusting Saudi Arabia -- and then there are all those other ads, Strutt-&-Parker stuff, offering a Plantagenet hunting lodge that only a crooked Arab (or, nowadays as well, a crooked Russian) could afford, or a half-timbered Tudor (with all the computer-wiring trimmings) in Virginia Water, or a brand-new pseudo-true oast house in Sevenoaks or, in London itself, flats in Cadogan Gardens with keys to the private park, or...

This is the kind of thing that butters the bread, and molds the minds, at the Financial Times. Money, money, money. Arab money, Arab money, Arab money.

What do you expect?

Cinque Henderson explains why he is one of the 10% of black Democrats who are not Obama supporters in TNR:

...It's worth remembering that the majority of blacks still think O.J. Simpson is innocent. And, in times like these, when a black man is out front in the public eye, black people feel both proud and vulnerable and, as a result, scour the earth for evidence of racists plotting to bring him down, like an advance team ready to sound an alarm. Barack needed only a gesture, a quick sneer or nod in the direction of the Clintons' hidden racism to avail himself of the twisted love that rescued O.J. and others like him and to smooth his path to victory, and, therefore, to salvage his candidacy. After Donna Brazile and James Clyburn started to cry racism, Barack was repeatedly asked his thoughts. He declined to answer, allowing the charge to grow for days (in sharp contrast to how he leapt to Joe Biden's defense a month earlier). But, while he remained silent about the allegations of racism, he gave speeches across South Carolina that warned against being "hoodwinked" and "bamboozled" by the Clintons. His use of the phrase is resonant. It comes from a scene in Malcolm X, where Denzel Washington warns black people about the hidden evils of "the White Man" masquerading as a smiling politician: "Every election year, these politicians are sent up here to pacify us," he says. "You've been hoodwinked. Bamboozled."

By uttering this famous phrase, Obama told his black audience everything it needed to know. He was helping to convince blacks that the first two-term Democratic president in 50 years, a man referred to as the first black president, is in fact a secret racist. As soon as I heard that Obama had quoted from Malcolm X like this, I knew that Obama would win South Carolina by a massive margin.

I'm part of an Internet group of black people who yammer on about politics. You could extrapolate from polling data that I would be the lone Clinton supporter in the bunch. And, indeed, I am. A member of the group posted the following anecdote after Barack's now famous race speech:

Last week, I was sitting in a lobby chatting with the woman next to me. All of a sudden, she grabbed my hand as if she realized at that moment that I was black. She asked, do you go to church? I responded in the affirmative. Then she asked, do you go to a black church? I said yes. She said, I'm so glad that I met you. I have been really wanting to discuss this with someone. Is it true what they are saying about what goes on in the black church? I smiled and we had a lovely chat about pastors, Obama, civil rights and all things colored. She looked so relieved and really wanted to understand.

This story broke my heart. As the son of a Baptist minister, I can attest that Wright is and was an extreme aberration from how the overwhelming majority of black Christians worship. In church, black people hear about Peter, Paul, Mary, and how to get into heaven. How to forgive. How to love. Not how to vote.

But here was Barack suggesting that Wright's behavior was commonplace in black churches: "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community." He generalized Wright's ridiculousness to distract from his individual choice to worship under a buffoon for two decades. I have a cousin who attended Wright's church for three weeks and then left, never to return. She had no interest in hearing his nonsense from the pulpit.

Barack obscured the true nature of black religious life because, to do otherwise, he would have had to answer the question, "Why are you a member of a church that is this racially divisive and such a sharp aberration to how the rest of black people worship?" When Barack beautifully suggested that the beliefs pronounced from the pulpit of Trinity in Chicago are not uncommon, he was feeding us garbage. But Barack needed to protect his reputation as a race-healer and unifier, so he told a lie about black religious life to help keep the glow of his own reputation alive. And now the evidence suggests that Barack didn't, in the end, break with Wright over his outrageous racial claims, but over his suggestion that Barack is just a politician.

That so many people have a stake in ignoring these real concerns is troubling. At least the Hillary supporters I know seem to be aware of her more unsavory traits: that she carries a knife with her that she could pull out at any minute. Not so with Obama's fans. It's nearly impossible to get them to admit any wrong in him. Given the choice, I prefer to side with the group that knows their candidate can be a jerk, rather than the group that believes their candidate is Jesus.

If you change one letter of Arab, and rearrange the letters, you get ABBA:

The first of Dennis Potter's television dramas to be shown  in the United States was "Pennies From Heaven." Few will have forgotten where they were, and with whom they were watching, that first episode, and the first song in that episode, when Arthur (played by Bob Hoskins), hapless and hopeless but full of hopeful schemes and dreams, gets out of bed, where his uncomprehending wife (played by Gemma Craven) stonily remains, goes over to the window, pulls the curtain, looks out, and suddenly starts to sing a song.

Here is that song:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=R_AQvsPB9n8&feature=related

MSNBC has an interview with Senator McCain in which he reveals he is just as stupefied about Islam and just as blinded by wishful thinking as the most hopeful we-are-the-world liberal. The Republican Party, and his candidacy, are doomed if McCain doesn't get out from under his kagans, kristols, boots, and other advisers determined to cling to what Hugh Fitzgerald has called "Tarbaby Iraq." He needs to see that effort as a squandering, with goals that "are both wrong and unattainable." It is easy to see Obama running with this all the way to the White House: "McCain wants us to endure another 2-3 trillion dollars in expense, another 4,000 dead, another 50,000 wounded.  And for what? How does this make us safer?" The fact that Obama may be against the war for all the wrong reasons -- and certainly not in order "to exploit the fissures, and divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam"-- won't matter. What will matter is he wants us out, and McCain keeps mindlessly talking about "winning" a war without being able to explain the nature of that "winning."  

McCain, running in the November election to succeed Bush in 2009, described a scenario he thought he could achieve within his first four-year term.

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.

"The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced," McCain said.

The Republican senator said that although the United States would still have a troop presence in Iraq, those soldiers would not need a "direct combat role" because Iraqi forces would be capable of providing order.

McCain also predicted that al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden would be captured or killed within four years and the militant group's presence in Afghanistan would be reduced to remnants...

The administration won't be able to blame this sticky wicket on Ambassador Bremer who got out while the gettin' was good after the official transfer of sovereignty. The rest of the military should have been right behind him as I recall Hugh Fitzgerald counseled at the time. Maliki is Rice's man in Baghdad (see Bob Woodward's book) and it seems as though she has been willing to cover up a multitude of his sins.

AP: WASHINGTON - The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.

Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the department's Office of Accountability and Transparency last year, and James Mattil, who worked as the chief of staff, told Senate Democrats on Monday that their office was understaffed and its warnings and recommendations ignored.

Brennan also alleges the State Department prevented a congressional staffer visiting Baghdad from talking with staffers by insisting they were too busy. In reality, Brennan said, the staffers were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers' workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's "evisceration" of Iraq's top anti-corruption office, he said.

The State Department's policies "not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government," Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

The U.S. Embassy "effort against corruption — including its new centerpiece, the now-defunct Office of Accountability and Transparency — was little more than 'window dressing,'" he added.

The Office of Accountability and Transparency, or "OAT," was intended to provide assistance and training to Iraq's anti-corruption agencies. It was dismantled last December, after it alleged in a draft report leaked to the media that al-Maliki's office had derailed or prevented investigations into Shiite-controlled agencies....

The State Department did not immediately provide comment. Iraqi government officials could not be reached.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, head of the Democratic Policy Committee, said the latest testimony is disheartening in light of al-Radhi's previous estimate that corruption had cost Iraq — and U.S. taxpayers — some $18 billion.

"One would have expected that our own government would have been doing everything it could to support" Iraq's anti-corruption efforts, said Dorgan, D-N.D.

But "that was simply not the case. On the contrary, our own government contributed to the culture of corruption," he added.

The Telegraph: Queen Elizabeth is presented with a copy of the Koran during a visit to the Green Mosque in Turkey.

Her Majesty, who had been wearing a wide-brimmed hat and white shoes, adhered to the Islamic dress code, which requires women to cover their heads and all visitors to remove their footwear, during the visit to the 15th century Green Mosque in the eastern city of Bursa.

Oriana Fallaci, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

According to this poll conducted by American Congress for Truth, the American people overwhelmingly support measures like this. This comes from WND:

A Republican leader of Congress has urged President Bush to press the Saudi government to reform its textbooks during his visit tomorrow with Saudi King Abdullah.

In a letter to Bush, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., founder of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, warned that the kingdom is still "spreading a dangerous ideology that attacked us on 9/11 and continues to threaten the United States and its allies around the world."

"I strongly urge you to raise my concerns regarding the use of textbooks that are sanctioned by the Saudi government for use within the country and around the world that preach hatred and violence toward non-Muslims and Western ideals of liberty," she said in the May 5 missive.

Despite Abdullah's post-9/11 promises of reforms, Saudi school texts used for Islamic studies still encourage violence and hatred toward "infidels," according to a recent comprehensive review by the Freedom House.

The nonprofit group says indoctrination begins as early as first grade and expands each year, culminating in a 12th-grade text teaching teens that their religious duty includes waging "jihad" against the infidel to "spread the faith."

Here are relevant passages from the Saudi textbooks, by grade level:

• First Grade: "Every religion other than Islam is false."

• Fourth Grade: "True belief means ... that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly."

• Fifth Grade: "It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in Allah and His Prophet."

• Sixth Grade: "Just as Muslims were successful in the past when they came together in a sincere endeavor to evict the Christian crusaders from Palestine, so will the Arabs and Muslims emerge victorious, Allah willing, against the Jews and their allies if they stand together and fight a true jihad for Allah, for this is within Allah's power."

• Eighth Grade: "The apes are the Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."

• Ninth Grade: "The clash between this (Muslim) community and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as Allah wills."

Myrick worries the hateful religious indoctrination could translate into violence against the West. Of immediate concern, she notes, are the thousands of young Saudi men scheduled to immigrate to the U.S. on student visas...

[A] McCain presidency would promise an entirely conventional, center-left, multilateralism. 

If you liked the second Bush term, if you liked Clintonian foreign policy, you will find much to admire in a Commander-in-Chief McCain. There would be the same agonizing over European and Islamic perceptions of America; the same doctrinaire commitment to the alchemy of democracy promotion; and the same fondness for heaping more unaccountable bureaucratic sprawl atop the already counter-productive agencies and multinational institutions that frustrate the United States at every turn.

Aside from my oft-stated objections to the underlying premises of the democracy project (which McCain may be even more entranced by than is the Bush administration if that's possible), here, fwiw, is my take on the League of Democracies:

His democracy infatuation is such that McCain also plans to create a “League of Democracies.” Evidently, this new multi-lateral behemoth would do what the United Nations is supposed to do, but doesn’t. We are not told what criteria would break a country into the league (Russia and Iran, for example, insist they are democracies), much less how those criteria would be enforced. McCain does take pains, though, to assure us that the league “would not supplant the UN or other international organizations but complement them[.]” Great. This initiative, meanwhile, will merely redouble his promised effort to “institutionaliz[e] our cooperation [with the European Union] on such issues as climate change, foreign assistance, and democracy promotion.” What’s not to love for a conservative?

Like Rebecca, but for different reasons, I don't like to see our Queen covering her head to visit a Turkish mosque. It isn't the head covering that bothers me, though. It's the fact that she went to Turkey in the first place.

For all my - by conservative standards - "strident" feminism, I have no objection to conservative religious dress, particularly in a religious context. I have visited many Muslim countries, and have been happy to wear a headscarf and take my shoes off when visiting a mosque. I have also taken my shoes off - I am a natural peasant and love being barefoot - in Buddhist temples. In Georgia, I was obliged to cover my head when visiting even the humblest of churches, while in Uzbekistan, a Muslim country, hardly any women did.  Men, too, must often dress conservatively in a religious setting, although the rules are generally applied more strictly to women.

As a Christian, I am completely in agreement with Rebecca about St Paul. He was a man of his time. Jesus, not so limited,