Found in the snow outside our building this morning while we walked The Ambassador:  a $3 Burger King credit card receipt.

A growing minority of young Muslims are inspired by political Islam and feel they have less in common with non-Muslims than their parents do, a survey reveals today. The poll, carried out for the conservative-leaning Policy Exchange thinktank, found support for Sharia law, Islamic schools and wearing the veil in public is significantly stronger among young Muslims than their parents.

In the survey of 1,003 Muslims by the polling company Populus through internet and telephone questionnaires, nearly 60% said they would prefer to live under British law, while 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds said they would prefer sharia law, against 17% of those over 55. Eighty-six per cent said their religion was the most important thing in their lives.

Nearly a third of 16 to 24-year-olds believed that those converting to another religion should be executed...--from this news item

And they will continue to do so until that day when the Western world no longer appeases or apologizes for being...the Western world. And then the rest of the Infidels must do the same. And then they must cease the Jizyah of foreign aid to all Muslims. They must exploit or at the very least do nothing to prevent, the natural fissures, ethnic (Arabs using Islam as a vehicle for linguistic, cultural, economic, and political imperialism, as with the Kurds, the Berbers, the black African Muslims in Darfur), sectarian (Sunni and Shi'a mutual resentments that pre-date the existence of the United States by about a thousand years), and economic (the rich Arab states that have somehow managed to hornswoggle the Europeans and Americans, despite the ten trillion dollars those rich Arab states have received from an accident of geology, into giving tens of billions to Iraq, to Egypt, to Jordan, to the so-called "Palestinians." Let them get it from their fabulously rich fellow members of the umma al-islamiyya, the only ones to whom they owe loyalty and the only ones to whom the rich Arab Muslims supposedly owe loyalty).

We must limit as much as possible the presence of Muslims in our societies, by halting all immigration and making no compromises with Islam so that those who wish to lead a perfectly Islamic life will not, in the Infidel world, have this made any easier by the Infidels agreeing to change their legal and political institutions, their social arrangements, their understanding of the universe, their anything at all.

And then we must help create the conditions that will force Muslims, in Muslim states and societies suffused with Islam, to be made aware of the link between their political, economic, social, moral, and intellectual failures, and the tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam itself, beginning with that "Allah knows best" habit of mental submission that has permanent effects on the brains of young people, and help to explain the absence of free and skeptical inquiry, and the resort to the most crazed of conspiracy theories and wild notions of every kind.

It is the only way: make Infidels understand what Islam is all about, and then they, in turn, will be better able to force Muslims to confront their own real problem, the one thing they cannot at this point conceivably blame for all their woes: Islam itself.

IN A move widely seen to be bowing to Muslim pressure, Bolton Council has scrapped its Holocaust Memorial Day event.

The council is to replace it with a Genocide Memorial Day in June. This is in line with the policy of the Muslim Council of Britain, which continues to boycott HMD and is asking for a Genocide Day, which will also mark "the ongoing genocide and human rights abuses of Palestinians" by Israelis.--from this news item

The uniqueness of a particular kind of genocide, conducted by an advanced European state, and aided and abetted by all kinds of people outside of Germany, has to be recognized with something. For this was not merely attempting to kill all the people of one ethnicity or religion in one place, but to seek them out, wherever the German writ ran, and to kill them everywhere -- everywhere in the world, if possible. That is what distinguishes the Nazi murders of the Jews, which cap a long history of Western antisemitism, which is different in its origin from the antisemitism of Islam, from all other attacks that might be called genocide, such as those of the Turks on the Armenians within Turkey, but with no attempt or intent to wipe out Armenians who might be in Iran, or in Europe, or America, or anywhere outside of Turkey. Thus there are massacres (ordinarily limited in time), mass-murders (that continue for a while longer), genocides (where a given population, ordinarily identified by race or religion or ethnicity, is murdered to the last local victim) and the Holocaust (a genocide which, unlike all the others, did not stop at Germany's borders, and could not have been satisfied by, say, the removal of all Jews from Europe, but would have continued as long as the Nazis could continue, and if they could have conquered the New World, they would certainly have killed the Jews in both North and South America, as they would those in Asia and in Africa.

That is why a "Genocide Day" is a deliberate attempt to do two things: dilute the enormity of the Nazi crime, and of the Jews as victims (a Nazi crime in which Haj Amin el Husseini was an enthusiastic supporter and aid, and then there were so many pro-Nazis among Arab leaders, such as Anwar Sadat (imprisoned by the British for pro-Nazi activities) and Rashid Ali in Iraq (soon overthrown), and of course the Arab masses, who were rooting for the Nazis. Bad as the British administration in Palestine was, at least it had the common sense to pass out rifles to the Jews of Palestine, knowing that they could be trusted to fight the Germans, and they were right: spectacular deeds were done in the Western Desert of Egypt, in Syria, and in Iraq, by Palestinian Jewish volunteers who knew they were often being sent on suicide missions, and gladly undertook them.

Oh, those rifles? As soon as the war was over, the British in Mandatory Palestine went around and confiscated all of them. They didn't want the Jews to be armed; meanwhile, the British government continued to train and arm the armies of Transjordan (see the memoirs of Glubb Pasha and of Sir Alec Kirkbride), and Egypt, and Iraq.

As for the supposed atrocities wreaked on the "Palestinians" (i.e. the local Arabs carefully renamed the "Palestinian people" after the Six-Day War) by those monstrous Israelis, there has been a catalogue of horrors, of more than 30,000 separate attacks on Israeli civilians since 1948 (19,000 of them by the Egyptian fellahin alone). Plane hijackings, the beating to death of young boys, the killing of schoolgirls at Ma'alot and on outings to a Jordanian "peace garden," the murders of Israelis at pizza parlors, Passover celebrations, on buses, in cars, on the sidewalk, in schools, everywhere. And yet the Israelis continue to supply free medical care to the Arabs, built their first universities (the very ones where Arabs, that is "Palestinians," now agitate and learn the skills that may make them more effective in the Lesser Jihad against Israel).

Yes, by all means there should be an observance of the hideous Lesser Jihad, that has no end, and can have no end, that has been conducted by nearly two dozen Arab Muslim states, possessing territory that is a thousand times as large as that nearly-invisible sliver on the world map, the state of Israel, and of course, the greatest unearned wealth in the history of humanity.

There has been atrocity after atrocity in the Middle East. But not by the Israeli side.

Have you ever been quietly washing your hands at a sink, say in an airport bathroom, and had to endure someone at the next sink taking off his shoes, and then his socks, and then rolling up his trousers, and then lifting up and right into the sink next to you a particularly unattractive and hairy leg, and a foot that certainly needs washing, and then busily scrubbing it, and then repeating with the other foot, and then with the arms, and parts of the face and neck, and you can say nothing, you must say nothing, even though you have seen people wash outside mosques in the Middle East who always seemed to do it in a much more cursory fashion, and you cannot help thinking that there is a little bit of stick-it-to-the-Infidels in all the sloshing and making of a mess.

Shall I go on? Shall I describe the particular practices I observed, and Russians observed and wondered about, of Arab students at Soviet universities, the ones who took seriously the need to follow the injunction of Muhammad that one "must not defecate into still water" (see Al-Qaradawi's handbook to halal and haram), which meant that the toilet itself could not be used (with its "still water") but that one had to choose another place and so....

I can't go on. I go on.

No, this isn't the place for Beckett.

Let me just say that if you have lived in societies where Islam is the rule, or had a chance to observe them up close, you know what I am talking about.

It never ceases to amaze me.

Erratum:

It ceases to amaze me.

MEMRI, the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, has started a blog, called MEMRI Blog (www.memriblog.org).  As it explains, "While MEMRI regularly provides translations from editorials and sermons, as well as expert analysis, The MEMRI Blog will specifically highlight brief NEWS ITEMS from Arabic, Persian, and Turkish language media sources."  Good stuff here.

The New Duranty Times reports that Iran is moving forward to strengthen ties with the new "democratic" Iraq. In addition to providing reconstruction aid, Iran will also open banks in Baghdad:

In a surprise announcement,  [Iran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi] Qumi said Iran would soon open a national bank in Iraq, in effect creating a new Iranian financial institution right under the Americans’ noses. A senior Iraqi banking official, Hussein al-Uzri, confirmed that Iran had received a license to open the bank, which he said would apparently be the first “wholly owned subsidiary bank” of a foreign country in Iraq.

“This will enhance trade between the two countries,” Mr. Uzri said.

Mr. Qumi said the bank was just the first of what he said would be several in Iraq — an agricultural bank and three private banks also intend to open branches. Other elements of new economic cooperation, he said, include plans for Iranian shipments of kerosene and electricity to Iraq and a new agricultural cooperative involving both countries.

He would not provide specifics on Iran’s offer of military assistance to Iraq, but said it included increased border patrols and a proposed new “joint security committee.” ...

"Fundamentalist, anti-American regimes could hatch in exactly the baskets where we're tempted to park our strategic eggs."  ~  Ralph Peters

Daniel Gross writes in Slate:

This is a bad time to be head of a publicly held media company, and it's an especially bad time to be head of the publicly held New York Times Co. The stock has been staggering for the last five years. Morgan Stanley is pushing a shareholder resolution aimed at ending the company's dual-class stock structure, which allows the Sulzberger family to control the Times despite owning only a small portion of the stock. (According to the most recent proxy, Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. owns about 5.3 percent of the company's stock.) Sulzberger has been derided everywhere for weak leadership, and the company has been struggling to maintain editorial quality while hitting earnings targets. (Quality often loses. This week, the Boston Globe, which is owned by the Times, announced it would shutter its remaining foreign bureaus.) ...

A letter to the editor in today's NY Sun:

Two weeks ago in Denmark, Vice President Gore refused to debate the thesis of his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth," now nominated for two Academy Awards, with Professor Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" [Oped, "Publicity Stunt," January 23, 2007].

Last week in Massachusetts, President Carter refused to debate the thesis of his book "Palestine: Peace or Apartheid" with law professor Alan Dershowitz. There can only be two reasons why these two men would refuse to defend their opinions in a public debate: 1) they know their arguments to be weak and ill-founded; 2) they are using the tyranny of their "celebrity" status.

FRANKLIN REINAUER
New York, N.Y.

Law enforcement defends its honor, despite the “hero” propaganda...

...The sordid details that should condemn these corrupt agents — agents who make the jobs of honest law-enforcement officers galactically harder both in the field and in the courtroom — have been obscured by layers of hyperbole. Hyperbole by which they’ve ludicrously been portrayed as “heroes.” Truth be damned, they have somehow managed to make themselves the rallying cry for Americans enraged by their government’s conscious avoidance — indeed, its active facilitation — of exploding illegal immigration and all its consequent social maladies.

Most ironic of all, this farce owes to the outrage that most offends us: Mexican drug pushers who enter illegally to peddle their poison north of the border. The kind of low-lifes Sutton prosecutes in droves, working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Border Patrol.

One such dope-smuggler, Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila, is at the center of the storm around the two mythologized agents. The propaganda version holds that Aldrete-Davila got off scot-free, while our brave “heroes,” agents Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, are serving heavy-duty jail-time for just doing their jobs.

That's just not the truth.

The rest is here.

Bernard Lewis seems to be conceding that Bat Ye'or has been right all along in this interview with the Jerusalem Post (h/t DW):

Islam could soon be the dominant force in a Europe which, in the name of political correctness, has abdicated the battle for cultural and religious control, Prof. Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Middle Eastern and Islamic scholar, said on Sunday.

The Muslims "seem to be about to take over Europe," Lewis said at a special briefing with the editorial staff of The Jerusalem Post. Asked what this meant for the continent's Jews, he responded, "The outlook for the Jewish communities of Europe is dim." Soon, he warned, the only pertinent question regarding Europe's future would be, "Will it be an Islamized Europe or Europeanized Islam?" The growing sway of Islam in Europe was of particular concern given the rising support within the Islamic world for extremist and terrorist movements, said Lewis.

Lewis, whose numerous books include the recent What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East, and The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, would set no timetable for this drastic shift in Europe, instead focusing on the process, which he said would be assisted by "immigration and democracy." Instead of fighting the threat, he elaborated, Europeans had given up.

"Europeans are losing their own loyalties and their own self-confidence," he said. "They have no respect for their own culture." Europeans had "surrendered" on every issue with regard to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness" and "multi-culturalism," said Lewis, who was born in London to middle-class Jewish parents but has long lived in the United States.

The threat of extremist Islam goes far beyond Europe, Lewis stressed, turning to the potential impact of Iran going nuclear under its current regime.

The Cold War philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which prevented the former Soviet Union and the United States from using the nuclear weapons they had targeted at each other, would not apply to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran, said Lewis.

"For him, Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement," said Lewis of Ahmadinejad. "We know already that they [Iran's ruling ayatollahs] do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. We have seen it again and again. If they kill large numbers of their own people, they are doing them a favor. They are giving them a quick, free pass to heaven. I find all that very alarming," said Lewis...

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world’s 77 million Anglicans, has denounced the political manipulation of the Nazi Holocaust for current political ends, and has called for a renewed struggle against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.

Dr Williams drew attention to what he called “two contrasting events of the last quarter of 2006” which “[i]n different ways each highlighted very clearly why we shall continue to need an annual national Holocaust Memorial Day for the foreseeable future and why all British citizens should mark it.”
The first was an honorary knighthood conferred on Professor Elie Wiesel. “a survivor, not of some mythical event, nor of an episode of history now vague and opaque to us, but … of a real, recent and well documented series of events.”
Paying tribute to Wiesel, the Archbishop declared: “Through his life’s work he has enabled vast numbers of people to understand and appreciate something of the horror of what happened. We are indebted to him for the way in which he has honoured the memory of those who did not survive, by ensuring that they can be remembered.”

The second event, said Dr Williams, was “a sad and shocking contrast” – the conference in Teheran sponsored by the by the Institute for Political and International Studies at the request of Iranian President Ahmadinejad and announced as a “reconsideration of the evidence for the Holocaust”.
Dr Williams said: “The clear implication was that if it had happened at all, it had been greatly exaggerated from motives to do with Zionism and a European guilt complex.” He declared: “It cannot be acceptable to treat the systematic murder of six million Jews and others as a propaganda issue for a particular cause.”
Some Muslims refuse to acknowledge Holocaust Memorial Day, accusing it of being associated with Zionist propaganda. Others have suggested that the Shoah makes all criticism of Israel inadmissible because implicitly anti-Semitic. This most appalling of crimes, contradicting all principles of human dignity, compassion and justice, must be approached as a surgeon approaches a terrible wound on the human body: with extreme sensitivity, with the greatest skill and with a motivation that is rooted in a desire for healing.”
Referring to the Tehran meet specifically Dr Williams noted: “None of these were in evidence in the conference.” The Archbishop concluded: “On this Holocaust Memorial Day in 2007 we need to be reminded by survivors such as Sir Elie Wiesel of the reality of the events that they survived. We need also to ensure that, when in future we have no survivors physically amongst us, the evidence that has been so painstakingly collected by organisations such as the Yad Vashem Foundation continues to be available to all who wish to approach and study it with the respect that is due.”
He said: “May 2007 be the year in which we resolve in every local setting to combat anti-Semitic language and behaviour with new vigour.”

I am very annoyed that Bolton - famous for its football team and for producing me - has decided to drop its Holocaust Memorial Day. Bolton does not have a large Jewish community, but representatives should at least have been consulted. I hope that the Jews of Bolton were made welcome at any events in nearby Manchester.

The Bolton Evening News reports that the Leader of Bolton Council has apologised and promised to reinstate the event next year. He claims that a group of "interfaith" committee members hoodwinked him into thinking Jews had been consulted. I wonder whether "inter-", in this context, means "Muslim".

The piece linked has a number of comments, some rightly focusing on the uniqueness of the Holocaust, some saying that an inclusive day would be better, some saying that Islam is a major threat, some wondering what all the fuss is about and one from a deranged Muslim, denying the Holocaust altogether. Here is the piece of madness in its entirety, including the unseemly - sorry, Hugh - but hilarious malapropism at the end:

I remember when I was in college a few years ago and was told by a teacher - who had been in the army, that the holocaust did not exist and it is a figment of jewish imagination. I have no reason to doubt him. The state of israel clearly practices a "terrorist agenda" including assasinations both within its borders and outside and no one says anything to them. Remember, assasinations are against international laws. Why should we whimper to the quims of these people remembering an event that did not exist?

Steady on, now - two minutes' silence will do just fine.

With many others, I jumped to conclusions on the arrested Border Patrol officers story.  I assumed they were innocent, but I'm glad Andy McCarthy sets straight the record here.  Nevertheless, the open border question remains uppermost in the minds of voters, especially those in the states abutting Mexico. 

If we, in fact, no longer have a southern border in any meaningful sense, what precisely is the function of a now borderless Border Patrol?  The politically induced cyncism they must now live with has to be unbearable—except for the corrupt among them, whose hand strengthens daily under increasingly absurd working conditions. 

Sound familiar?  The Border Patrol is the canary in the coal mine, a fact cities like Los Angeles— with woefully strained hospitals and schools—don't need to be told. 

Alex Brown Posts:  "Barbaro was euthanized, at about 10:30 am this morning. Mike Jensen spoke with Mrs. Jackson. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson and Dr. Richardson were all in attendance."

Barbaro was a great horse, a battler, with great battling horse lovers around him.

Barbaro & his Dr. Richardson, UPenn New Bolton Center

That last phrase,  "whimper to the quims," the serendipitous result of a substandard command of English, nonetheless possesses a haunting beauty of its own. It might be the title of a tale describing, or promoting, the new unmanly man, whose time has come, for he may be bookended with the new manly woman:  Whimper to the Quims.

There is more that might be done with this, before we are through.

Spooneristic play, of the visual rather than aural variety, yields another way of alluding to the Pottery Barn Misrules --that is, no rules at all-- as The Whims of Quimper. A treat for those on these shores who, like Jacques Barzun and Francis Steegmuller and Justin O'Brien, and others of that francophone ilk, do like, from time to time, to feel the sea-breeze of Brezh wafting over the Upper East Side, and Morningside Heights, and even Washington Square.

It's come to this. From The Sun:

OFFICIALS are bracing themselves for a storm of public outrage over their controversial X-ray cameras scheme.

As part of the most shocking extension of Big Brother powers ever planned here, lenses in lampposts would snap “naked” pictures of passers-by to trap terror suspects...

A January 17 memo seen by The Sun discusses the cameras, which can see through clothes.

It says “detection of weapons and explosives will become easier” and says cameras could be deployed in street furniture.

It adds: “Some technologies used in airports have already been used as part of police operations looking for drugs and weapons in nightclubs. These and others could be developed for a much more widespread use in public spaces.

“Street furniture could routinely house detection systems that would indicate the likely presence of a gun, for example.”

Peeking as in duck, perhaps, a bit of lubricious Cockney rhyming slang.

“Street furniture could routinely house detection systems that would indicate the likely presence of a gun, for example.”

Is that a gun in your pocket? No, you're just pleased to see me.

House prices will peak soon and then go down. How do I know this? Easy – broom cupboard syndrome.

House prices rise and rise – it’s happened before. Then there’s a story in the papers about a broom cupboard for sale in Knightsbridge for £1 million. Then prices level off and even fall. A few days ago there was a story of  a 12 ft by 6 ft flat for sale in Chelsea, on the market at £170,000. This means prices will fall soon.

I may be wrong, of course. But that’s not the point. The point is that the headline is “No room to swing a cat”, and the writer of the piece says:

It would be unwise, therefore, to bring along the proverbial cat, not least because there would be no room to swing it (and yes, we do know that the “ cat” in the saying is the cat-o’-nine-tails).

Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is a common piece of folk etymology, which has no basis in fact. A Victoria Sold Dennis saved me the trouble of writing to The Times to point this out:

If you believe that the cat in the saying “no room to swing a cat” is the cat-o-nine-tails, rather than a live moggy, you have been deceived by the notorious underground folk-etymology guerrilla group CANOE (the Campaign to Attribute Nautical Origins to Everything).

The first known use of this phrase is in 1665, when it was a charming English custom to hang a live cat in a leather bottle and set it swinging as a target for marksmen. It is much more likely that the phrase refers to this practice, which Shakespeare refers to in Much Ado About Nothing: “Hang me in a bottle like a cat, and shoot at me.”

The term “cat-o’-nine-tails” for a whip is not recorded until 1695, and there is no authenticated instance of “no room to swing a cat” being used with this meaning during the entire existence of the sailing navy. (And actually no reason why it should have been; naval floggings were always carried out on deck, for the edification of the rest of the crew.)

I had never heard of CANOE, but I know what she means. Take the word “posh”. Lots of people think that this originally stood for "Port Out Starboard Home", referring to 1st class cabins shaded from the sun on outbound voyages west, and homeward heading voyages east. There is no evidence for this at all. The folk etymology is what you call a bacronym, which means that the words of the expanded term were chosen to fit the letters of the acronym. Other bacronyms include GOLF, which does not stand for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden, and CHAV, which does not stand for Council Housed And Violent, even if it ought to.

Many of our phrases are of nautical origin, however. For examples, see this site: 

Many phrases that have been adopted into everyday use originate from seafaring - in particular from the days of sail. The nautical origin of many of these is now forgotten. Conversely, some people do like to attribute the origin of phrases to seafaring with no justification other than the romantic image of horny-handed sailors singing shanties and living a hearty and rough life at sea. After all, it sounds plausible that 'cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey' comes from brass ship's fittings and that POSH means 'Port out, starboard home'. Neither of these is correct though.

Fortunately, activities at sea have been scrupulously recorded over the centuries, in insurance records, newspaper accounts and, not least, in ships' log books. The term log-book has an interesting derivation in itself. An early form of measuring a ship's progress was by casting overboard a wooden board (the log) with a string attached. The rate at which the string was payed out as the ship moved away from the stationary log was measured by counting how long it took between knots in the string. These measurements were later transcribed into a book. Hence we get the term 'log-book' and also the name 'knot' as the unit of speed at sea.

The list below are phrases that have documentary evidence to support the claim of a nautical origin:

All at sea
Batten down the hatches
Between the Devil and the deep blue sea
Broad in the beam
Chock-a-block
Close quarters
Copper-bottomed
Cut and run
Give a wide berth
Go by the board
Hand over fist
Hard and fast
High and dry
In the offing
Know the ropes
On your beam ends
Plain sailing
Shipshape and Bristol fashion
Shake a leg
Shiver my timbers
Taken aback
Tell it to the marines
The bitter end
The cut of your jib
Three sheets to the wind

Or Frog toady, back home in Switzerland:  The ancestors of the intellectuals with whom the good senator is most at home expressed similar contempt for America, never missing a toast to the Nazi officers for whom they spread their checkered café table cloths.  Always for himself, John Kerry's tears.  Never forget that.

Talking of nautical things, I happened to be on HMS Belfast the other day. She is a decommisioned Royal Navy cruiser which has been moored in the Thames opposite the Tower of London,  for the last 30 years as part of the Imperial War Museum.

I borrowed the camera and took some photos. The asymetric building is City Hall. Very avant guard.

Tower bridge will be well known to you. It is not falling down, and was not sold to Arizona. That was London bridge.