In "Parables of Truth: Chesterton at the Movies," his essay in the current Chesterton Review (not available online), Owen Lee asks,

Were there epigrams worthy of Chesterton in the movies?  I thought back over seventy years of movie-going and recalled few: the remark made by Bible-reading spinster Katherine Hepburn to gin-soaked Humprey Bogart in The African Queen, when he says his excesses are only human nature: "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above."  And the rebuke made by a Pentagon official in Dr. Strangelove when a fistfight breaks out between an American general and a Russian dipolomat:   "You can't fight in here!  This is the War Room!"  And that relatively innocent asseveration made by Mae West in I'm No Angel:  "It's not the men in your life that counts, it's the life in your men."

Raffi Khatchadourian has a quite a good piece on 'Azzam the American' in the New Yorker. Robert Spencer points out that it contains an interesting bit of information: that the state of California provided funds to a bogus charity Gadahn was involved with. There are also some entertaining statements by the FBI like this one:

Adam Gadahn’s transformation into Azzam al-Amriki may turn out to be a valuable case study in this effort. “The thing that concerns me with Adam Gadahn’s situation is, how did it happen?” Randy Parsons, who ran the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism division in Los Angeles from 2002 to 2006, told me. “How did he convert, not to Islam, because obviously what he is into is not mainstream Islam, but to a particularly virulent, violent, radical view of Islam? How does somebody get to that?”

"obviously...not mainstream Islam" Obviously.  There is also more than you ever wanted to know about "death metal," a musical form young Gadahn was obsessed with for awhile.

"WHO ARE WE TO TO LIVE WITHOUT HIS PERMISSION ?

I say Democracy is a LIE
Justification for SIN

Politics is weak without GOD. IT IS SIN"
-- from a reader calling himself "holy warrior"

The comment of "holy warrior" above is instructive.

It contains two of the elements of Islam that Infidels need to be reminded of:

The first is that The Believer as slave to Allah. He has no right to live "without his [Allah's] permission. He must follow the rules, of Allah, his Total Regulation of Life, the duty Allah imposes on all Believers to participate in Jihad to spread Islam until it everywhere dominates, and Muslims dominate -- everywhere.

Do these rules make sense? Are they amenable to reason? It doesn't matter. They are Allah's rules, as communicated to Muhammad, as set down in the Qur'an, as glossed, in essence, by Muhammad and the Companions in the Sunna (which consist mainly of the Hadith and Sira, but of a little more as well).

And "democracy is a LIE." Why is "democracy" a LIE? Because it elevates mere slaves of Allah, mere mortals, above Allah himself. For if mere mortals, as voters, can decide on the legitimacy of a government, and if that government can impose a rule, or enact laws, that contradict the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari'a, then those mere mortals, even if they call themselves Believers, have been led into a dark place by the corruptions and inveiglements of "democracy" away from the True Path, away from the Path of Allah, the Path that always leads, inexorably, to the Holy Law of Islam.

Yet the Bush Administration is full of people who wish to deny or not to learn about this. And the other governments of the Western world are full of people who similarly wish to deny or not to learn about this. And the press, the radio, the television, the pontificators and editorialists everywhere, wish to deny or not to learn etc.

They substitute the plausible words of those practicing what should be detectable, by sensible people with a modicum of knowledge of Islam, as taqiyya. Or they are led astray by the personal charm of this or that Muslim colleague, who is "so nice" (so nice in fact, that he turns out to be far nicer in his little inquiries about your family, his little examples of thoughtfulness, than so many of your thoroughly busy-busy Western non-Muslim colleagues) that you make all kinds of assumptions based on that particular neighbor's or colleague's "niceness" that simply miss the point, miss all the points, about the belief-system of Islam, and furthermore assume that outward charm and "niceness" cannot co-exist with beliefs, on all kinds of matters, that would if you were aware of them chill you and give you quite another feeling. But since you never test the real views, on all kinds of matters, of that "nice" Muslim colleague, and you are content with the outward and visible signs of that "niceness" and that willingness, it appears, to integrate into Western societies ("why, he even shares a beer with us"), then you stay, perhaps willfully, unenlightened.

And if you are in the upper reaches of government, you find that the Unrepresentative Men -- the Chalabis and Makiyas and Allawis, and Women -- the Rend al-Rahims, or for that matter the pseudo-reformers who defend Islam such as Shirin Ebadi -- are taken as your guide.

But it is Islam itself, and the masses of Believers in Iraq, whose inculcated views, and the attitudes that naturally arise from them, that have decided what will happen in Iraq, not what Chalabi, the graduate of the University of Chicago, who assured so many credulous souls in the Administration about what would naturally happen in Iraq -- Chalabi, who had been out of Iraq for 45 years, the thoroughly Western and thoroughly secular Chalabi, who like the other westernized exiles may truly have forgotten, as so many in the Muslim elites tend to do when they are abroad, or try to do, what a country on Islam, what people on Islam, turn out to be and to do.

And having learned nothing about this, Western governments, and especially those in the American government, keep relying on, keep having "discussions" with (Rice loves "discussions" with ruling Arabs, almost as much as Hilary Clinton and a few other sappy-sentimental phonies running for office love these "conversations" with The American People), keep on avoiding the subject that matters most, in the Middle East, in Central Asia, in the Subcontinent, in southeast Asia, and above all, in Western Europe, where the weapons, and the people, and the museums, and the schools, and the lands of the West may, not through military means but by means of the "money weapon" provided by the rich Arabs (especially Saudis), and through propaganda, and systematic campaigns of Da'wa that target the psychically and economically marginal, and above all, through the simple arithmetic -- get out your Fibonacci sequence, get out your "rate of change depends on state of change" for some idea -- of demographic conquest, so that in the Netherlands for example, where in 1970 there were 15,000 Muslims, there are now, in 2006, more than a million. And with the results we see, if we visit Rotterdam or Amsterdam, all about us.

"Talking to newsmen at Chaklala Airbase before his departure, Musharraf said the world should resolve the problems faced by the Ummah urgently, to get rid of terrorism and extremism.

President Musharraf said an urgent solution of problems is must due to gravity of situation in Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon."-- from this news article

What is "Palestine" as referred to so blithely by Musharraf, and reported as if it were not to be questioned? The toponym "Palestine" was used in Western Christendom to refer to that land, on both sides of the river Jordan, which roughly corresponded to Biblical Palestine. More recently, it was the name given to that territory set aside by the League of Nations, under the Mandate for Palestine, for the establishment of the Jewish National Home that became the State of Israel after Israel successfully defended itself from the attacking Arabs during the War of Independence.

The use of the word "Palestine" by Arabs and Muslims is an attempt to efface Israel, and to replace it by a term that reifies that which does not exist -- an Arab "Palestine." It is not an innocent matter, devoid of meaning, and those non-Muslims who, like Blair, may refer to "Palestine" are in fact behaving, nolens-volens or perhaps willingly, as mouthpieces for Arab propaganda. No one who uses the term "Palestine" at the present is doing anything other than furthering the Arab and Muslim worldview.

After each appearance of the word "Palestine" in the Western, i.e., non-Muslim press, there should be an indication that there is not now (and many hope there never will be) a state called "Palestine." It is as phony as a state called "Mandela" which some black-power advocates wished, a dozen years ago, to carve out of parts of Boston, or the "Caliphate" that was created by a certain Turk in Cologne and which attracted a few thousand potential inhabitants.

There is a "Palestinian" Authority. There are local Arabs carefully renamed after 1967 as the "Palestinian people" (a phrase that appears nowhere in the statements of any Arab leader, or U.N. ambassador, or any other public figure, between 1948 and 1967, and even after the Six-Day War, it took several years for the new phrase, as with any propagandistic effort, to stick). There is not now a "Palestine." What was known in the West as "Palestine" is the current state of Israel and includes the land to which it had, by the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate, and has a legal, historic, and moral claim much more considerable than anything concocted by the Arab Muslims. There are Arabs and Jews in Israel, as there are Arabs and Kurds in Iraq and Arabs and Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and Arabs and Copts in Egypt. But there is not, even if the phrase is used a hundred million times, a distinct "Palestinian people" and there is no "Palestine" that should rightly be referred to without the reporter or news agency quoting someone using the phrase taking the time to simply indicate its not referring to a real country -- lest the ignorant be confused.

Here is how Musharraf's little comment, deplorable for many reasons including that passing-the-book and ignoring-the-nature-of-Islam, should appear if the Khaleej Times report is reprinted or quoted:

"President Musharraf said an urgent solution of problems is must due to gravity of situation in Iraq, Iran, Palestine [sic] and Lebanon."

One mo' time:

Palestine [sic], Palestine [sic], Palestine [sic].

Such a country does not exist. Muslims, both of the Slow and the Fast Jihad variety, would like it to exist. Infidels who understand that the existence of such a state would create for Israel an intolerable threat to its existence, and almost certainly lead, after a suitable interval, to Israel's disappearance, and to the loss of the Holy Land to the Western world, and to a colossal blow to Western morale (already still reeling, sublmiinally, from the effects of the Nazi murders and widespread participation or support by others in those murders and the battening on that loot), and would lead not to a sating of Muslim appetites in the world but to a whetting of those very appetites. For there is no such thing as "compromise" with Infidels. Either the forces of Islam can keep fighting, or they must stop fighting, temporarily, or seek new instruments of warfare, if they are defeated on the battlefield. But the state of war between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb continues forever, and is not affected by a temporary hudna, or by the inability of Muslims, for the moment, to attack.

Triumph in one area -- and the disappearance of Israel would be a great triumph -- does not lead to a willingness or desire to stop in working steadily for the spread of Islam, and against all barriers to its ultimate dominance everywhere. The Qur'an does not say, Allah never said: Win back from the Jews any land that they may control, and stop there. The Qur'an does not say, Allah never said: Take back all the lands that once were part of Dar al-Islam, including Spain, Sicily, parts of southern France, Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Rumania, Bulgaria, much of Hungary, most of India, and so on, and then the Jihad can stop. No: Allah commands that the world belongs to him, and to Islam, and to the Believers. Why should it be otherwise?

Indeed. Why should it be otherwise?

Muslims in Great Britain have been ranting recently about non-Muslim doctors treating Muslim women and seeing them in a state of undress. Yet if you visit an obstetrics ward anywhere in England, you will be struck by how many of the doctors -- almost all of them in some places, such as Cambridge -- are Muslims and many are male. Does it make sense for male Muslims to train as gynecologists or obstetricians given the Muslim view that women should not be seen in a state of undress by men other than their husbands? Or does it make perfect sense, because the same Muslim male doctor who would refrain from treating a Muslim female, but hand her over to a Muslim female colleague, would be happy to treat non-Muslim women, for that is a different and lower category of being altogether? Or should non-Muslim women, and men, for that matter, have some qualms about being treated by Muslim doctors, given what they know, or should know, about the views inculcated by Islam about Infidels, and how they are to be viewed, and treated, or mis-treated?

Yet if you visit an obstetrics ward anywhere in England, you will be struck by how many of the doctors -- almost all of them in some places, such as Cambridge -- are Muslims and many are male (Hugh Fitzgerald)

I am very curious as to what Hugh was doing visiting obstetrics wards “anywhere in England”. To know what they are like he would need to have visited many, if not all of them. I hope this whistle-stop tour was not occasioned by an unexpectedly productive fly-by-night visit to England some months earlier.

I am also puzzled as to how he would know that all these obstetricians were Muslim. It may be fairly clear that they are from the Indian sub-continent – what we in the UK call “Asian”. (In America, confusingly, “Asians” are what we used to call “Orientals”.) However, can you tell a Muslim – particularly a Muslim male – just by looking at him? They are as likely to be Indian as Pakistani, and as likely to be Sikh or Hindu as Muslim. Names are an indication, but only of family background rather than current allegiance.

Muslim educational achievement is low in the UK compared with that of Hindus and Sikhs, and medical training is demanding. It is therefore very likely that many of our doctors are Hindus and Sikhs. However, I don’t know if anyone has researched the religion, as opposed to the ethnicity, of doctors. It would be an interesting study.

Talking of Indian doctors, the fourth and fifth lines of this verse of “Goodness Gracious Me” (Doctor, I’m in trouble etc), contain a wonderful rhyme:

Him: From New Delhi to Darjeeling

I have done my share of healing,

And I've never yet been beaten or outboxed,

I remember that with one jab

Of my needle in the Punjab

How I cleared up beriberi

And the dreaded dysentery,

But your complaint has got me really foxed.

Her: Oh.

The Indian doctor was a gynaecologist. When he left for work in the mornings, his wife would say: “Have a nice day at the orifice, dear.”

Jerusalem, Israel (AHN) - Israeli opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday strongly urged the international community to do more to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, which he is certain would be used to perpetrate a nuclear holocaust against the Jewish state.

"I want to call on the world that didn't stop the Holocaust last time to stop any attempt this time," the AP quoted Netanyahu as telling a major annual political and defense policy conference at the Institute for Policy and Strategy in Herzliya...

"The key is the delegitimizing of the regime, with economic and political pressure," said Netanyahu.

The former prime minister's proposed formula consists of voluntary being imposed in individual nations even before additional U.N. action. "The moment the snowball of voluntary sanctions begins, the pressure on Iran will be immense," he said, noting that internal Iranian displeasure with the destructive policies of Ahmadinejad is already growing.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech to Iran's parliament on Sunday that the international community can impose as many sanctions as it wants, but will be unable to hinder the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

I think a better plan would be based on what happened to Osirak. Bomb early and often. Of course, we must first remove our troops from harm's way in Iraq, which will be a messy business in itself at this late date. I don't believe sanctions are a realistic long-term strategy in dealing with Iran. We have to destroy their nuclear assets on the ground.

"U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice often calls herself "a student of history." And increasingly, she is using history -- or her chosen slice of it -- both to explain and justify the Bush administration's Middle East policy." --Neil King Jr. in the WSJ (subscription required)

"Student of history"? How's that? A dutiful graduate student, a pleasant and plausible pleaser by her resume, which she submits early and often, and, though not chosen as the President of the University of Pennsylvania a few years ago when she applied, while in the Bush Administration, successful at this. But she is beyond the situation at hand. Right now she has said she is working furiously to prevent a "Sunni-Shi'a split" - why is she working furiously to do this?

A year or two ago she attempted to speak Russian to a Russian audience. The embarrassing performance made one wonder if she could have read sources in Russian for her early Kremlinology, for it was just a little beyond the kak-vy-pozhivaete stage. Not a deep student of Russian.

And not a "student of history" either -- though capable of impressing George Bush. If she had been a serious student of history, she would have been reading all kinds of books, including "The Dhimmi" and "Islam and Dhimmitude," and a dozen more indispensable texts, and would have been capable of dismissing the unrepresentative and smooth Arab leaders, and made policy rather, on the basis of how the Muslim masses, Sunni and Shi'a, Arab and non-Arab, think and behave and will continue to think and behave as long as Islam itself has not somehow been discredited or weakened by ideological assault, and she appears not to have given a moment's thought as to why that makes sense from the viewpoint of Infidel interests, Infidel goals. And the American government, its legal and political institutions, and the people who built them and the people who inherited them as their legacy and wish to preserve them, are -- all of them -- Infidels.

Leggings for men are in.

Leggings made of microfiber cotton and wool, shown in violet, forest green and Milan fog gray, all of them with stirrup straps, except of course for a couple of them cut above the knee, accompanied half the looks in this poetic, polished and unexpected collection.

These leggy knits were paired with mercerized cotton jerkins, snug little Rude Boy with manners jackets and Two Tone era skinny ties a big Milan trend. Marni shoes were also real winners, knobby workerist boots in bottle green or metallic gray with subtle strips of contrasting color like burgundy.

"Unconventional but sophisticated," smiled Consuelo Castiglioni, Marni's Creative Director, backstage after the show.

The ground fog of this war defined: from Michelle Malkin's investigation "of the Associated Press's four destroyed mosques/six immolated Sunnis story":

Lt. Col. Steven Miska, commander of the Dagger Brigade at Forward Operating Base Justice, observed: "Part of it is, if you're relying on Iraqi reporters, well, what are their biases? What clans are they from and tribes? Why are they telling me this? What's his underlying motivation? And if you quote a police chief, well, those guys have underlying motivations, too . . ."

"I've gone out and found police chiefs on the street and said, 'What happened here?' Something just blew up and he told me, 'Well, U.S. airplanes just bombed this building.'

"I said, 'What are you talking about? It was freakin' insurgent rockets that just hit the building, I picked them up on radar.' " But he just told the reporter on the street that U.S. warplanes bombed the building and killed 13 people.

"So, rumors on the street Iraqis will take at face value. Trying to get them to do investigations is like pulling teeth out of their head."

Sorry about the short notice - at 10 pm on Channel 4 there is a programme called Consent. This uses drama to illustrate the legal process. In a fictional incident, a woman accuses a work colleague of raping her. The two went to a party, had a few drinks and were going to sleep together when - allegedly - she changed her mind and he refused to stop. From that point on, real policeman, doctors and solicitors investigate this fictional crime, and the case is tried in front of a "real" jury. Then, when the jury has reached its verdict,  viewers are shown what actually happened.

The programme has been described as "a harrowing demonstration of the difficulties of establishing the truth beyond reasonable doubt". It should resonate with anyone who has been on a jury and had their doubts, as I have.

Rape cases are particularly problematic. Last year I wrote about this subject, and concluded, reluctantly, that even in an ideal world, where sexist attitudes and assumptions are eliminated, rape will always be a hopeless case, and rapists will always walk free. This arises logically from the presumption of innocence, which means that the woman's burden of proof must be greater than the man's.

The law is an imperfect instrument of justice, although it goes without saying that British law is infinitely superior to sharia, under which the woman who could not prove rape would be punished.

Further to my post here, of course he was acquitted. And when they showed what happened, of course he did it.

On the evidence as presented, I would have had "reasonable doubt" too, and would have had to acquit.

No way round this one legally. Morally, however, and I hope anyone who saw the programme will agree, there is a way round it - guys, when a woman says no she means no.

In a speech reported by CNN:

[Venezualan President Hugo] Chavez urged Venezuelans to embrace "21st-century socialism," which he said aims to curtail what he sees as U.S. cultural domination and redistribute the country's oil wealth to the poor through programs that provide subsidized food and cash benefits for single mothers.

"Socialism isn't going to fall from the sky. We are going to understand it, work on it, plant it, sweat it," said Chavez, praising Marx's ideals. "Socialism is built on practice."

Chavez said government officials were considering new legislation that would force businesses to set aside several hours a week for employees to study, and he recommended they read leaflets outlining socialist concepts.

Of course, something like Mao's little red book has clear marketing potential. 'Chavez's Little Green Book': coming soon to a bookstore near you.