Doing the email rounds this morning:

After an exhaustive review of the research literature, here's the final word on nutrition and health:
 
1. Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
 
2. Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.

3. Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
 
4. Italians and French drink excessive amounts of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
 
5. Germans drink beer and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than us.
 
CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Rast but not reast:

Sam Harris, who lent his support for this conference in Germany on the early history of the Koran, has good article in the  Huffington Post:

...There is an uncanny irony here that many have noticed. The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we will kill you. Of course, the truth is often more nuanced, but this is about as nuanced as it ever gets: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn't, we peaceful Muslims cannot be held responsible for what our less peaceful brothers and sisters do. When they burn your embassies or kidnap and slaughter your journalists, know that we will hold you primarily responsible and will spend the bulk of our energies criticizing you for "racism" and "Islamophobia."

Our capitulations in the face of these threats have had what is often called "a chilling effect" on our exercise of free speech. I have, in my own small way, experienced this chill first hand. First, and most important, my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali happens to be among the hunted. Because of the failure of Western governments to make it safe for people to speak openly about the problem of Islam, I and others must raise a mountain of private funds to help pay for her round-the-clock protection. The problem is not, as is often alleged, that governments cannot afford to protect every person who speaks out against Muslim intolerance. The problem is that so few people do speak out. If there were ten thousand Ayaan Hirsi Ali's, the risk to each would be radically reduced...

In a thrillingly ironic turn of events, a shorter version of the very essay you are now reading was originally commissioned by the opinion page of Washington Post and then rejected because it was deemed too critical of Islam. Please note, this essay was destined for the opinion page of the paper, which had solicited my response to the controversy over Wilders' film. The irony of its rejection seemed entirely lost on the Post, which responded to my subsequent expression of amazement by offering to pay me a "kill fee." I declined...

Even when one finds a true voice of Muslim moderation, it often seems distinguished by a lack of candor above all things. Take someone like Reza Aslan, author of No God But God: I debated Aslan for Book TV on the general subject of religion and modernity. During the course of our debate, I had a few unkind words to say about the Muslim Brotherhood. While admitting that there is a difference between the Brotherhood and a full-blown jihadist organization like al Qaeda, I said that their ideology was "close enough" to be of concern. Aslan responded with a grandiose, ad hominem attack saying, "that indicates the profound unsophistication that you have about this region. You could not be more wrong" and claiming that I'd taken my view of Islam from "Fox News." Such maneuvers, coming from a polished, Iranian-born scholar of Islam carry the weight of authority, especially in front of an audience of people who are desperate to believe the threat of Islam has been grossly exaggerated. The problem, however, is that the credo of the Muslim Brotherhood actually happens to be "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It's not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam "really" is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.

Occasionally, however, a lone voice can be heard acknowledging the obvious. Hassan Butt wrote in the Guardian:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

 

It is astounding how infrequently one hears such candor among the public voices of "moderate" Islam. This is what we owe the true moderates of the Muslim world: we must hold their co-religionists to the same standards of civility and reasonableness that we take for granted in all other people. Only our willingness to openly criticize Islam for its all-too-obvious failings can make it safe for Muslim moderates, secularists, apostates--and, indeed, women--to rise up and reform their faith.

And if anyone in this debate can be credibly accused of racism, it is the western apologists and "multiculturalists" who deem Arabs and Muslims too immature to shoulder the responsibilities of civil discourse. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali has pointed out, there is a calamitous form of "affirmative action" at work, especially in western Europe, where Muslim immigrants are systematically exempted from western standards of moral order in the name of paying "respect" to the glaring pathologies in their culture. Hirsi Ali has also observed that there is a quasi-racist double-think on display whenever western powers trumpet that "Islam is peace," all the while taking heroic measures to guard against the next occasion when the barbarians run amok in response to a film, cartoon, opera, novel, beauty pageant--or the mere naming of a teddy bear...

A. Millar has some interesting things to say about the British elections, Boris Johnson (don't miss Mary Jackson's article) Richard Barnbrook and the BNP over at Brussels Journal:

...Already, Johnson has pledged to get tough on crime, and, among other measures, will make a police presence more visible, ban drinking alcohol on the Tube (subway trains), and will strip anti-social youths of the right to free travel. At the end of his first week in office Johnson will also invite mayor of New York City Mike Bloomberg for talks, in order to help him establish policies and practices for London. (Bloomberg had declined to visit London when Livingstone was mayor, allegedly because of the latter’s support of suicide apologist Al-Qaradawi.) As London – and Britain as a whole – has been increasingly plagued by the kind and scale of gang violence that once ravaged New York City, and annulled by previous mayor Rudy Giuliani, New York would seem the perfect example for London. This move by Johnson, would also seem to be a part of the Conservative’s thinking, for, notably, Cameron said in March: 

I've been to New York and seen how you can have zero tolerance, beat-based policing that defeats crime and restores trust in the police. And with a Home Secretary like David Davis we can do that here.

 
If the Conservative Party made history with its sweeping success and wining of the election for London mayor, they were not the only party making headlines for electoral gains. Richard Barnbrook of the BNP won a seat on the London Assembly, after years of aiming for such a high profile. The party needed 5% of the London votes to secure one of the twenty-five Assembly seats, and managed to achieve just over that at 5.3% of the votes. This was, however, a modest win by the scale of some predictions. Tim Hames in The Times announced a few weeks before the election, “Prepare for a shock BNP victory,” and seemed to imply that two or three seats were quite possible for the party.
 
BNP leadership would undoubtedly point out that they now have a hundred seats country-wide, and would suggest, no doubt, that if their win in London was less than expected it was due to adverse publicity. Both The Times and the BBC lessened their criticism of the party in the weeks leading up to the election, though some others probably increased it. The Daily Mail not only compared Barnbrook’s style of dress with Hitler’s – on the rather flimsy basis that both at one point or another have worn brown – but let much of his past slip a few days prior to the day of voting. The most surprising of the paper’s revelations was, perhaps, that Barnbrook is currently getting a divorce from a woman he married a decade or so ago, and that the one-time art student had directed an artistic movie (some have called it “gay porn”), described by the newspaper as, “naked young men […] flagellating each other and simulating gay sex acts while homo-erotic poetry is intoned.”
 
Attacks on the BNP are nothing new, of course, and party head Nick Griffin has clearly developed a talent for nullifying tricky questions on the party’s stance on race and immigration, and for portraying it as the most moderate party imaginable (though, one with principles, you understand). Being interviewed on television, Griffin is affable. Barnbrook, in contrast, would benefit from a few lessons in public speaking.
 
He seems to have been caught off guard by a swath of audience exiting as he was about to deliver his acceptance speech. “Like rats leaving sinking ships,” he barked, launching into a fiery, yet monotone tirade that could only have pleased a hardcore of BNP voters – except for a lengthy aside about girlfriend Simone Clarke, which probably pleased only her. As they had with Livingstone, Paddick, and Johnson, the “gutter press” had gossiped about him, the only difference being, he asserted, that everything they had written about him was “lies.” Really?
 
Next, Barnbrook bewailed “positive discrimination,” multiculturalism, and political correctness which, he stated, has meant the minority getting the majority of the benefit; and he promised to scrutinize the mayor’s budget, “second by second,” to expose any such bias. “[…] It is not for people to enter this land dictating what will and will not happen to the people who created and built it over generations,” he asserted forcefully.
 
His words were more conciliatory at times, though with his tone remaining aggressive, they sounded strange, if not outright frightening. He promised to treat people on an equal footing, stating, for example:

all Londoners, every single one that was, if you need aid from a voice I’ll speak for you, representing you clearly across this capital city, without prejudice, without concern of color or identity, my hands will be open[ed] up as wide as that of the indigenous population and the first generation that came here, to every single Londoner as long as you play part within the identity of this great city.

In this, Barnbrook appears to be a realist. He, like all of the other elected representatives on the London Assembly, will be required to represent everyone living in London, not just the 5.3% who voted for the BNP. But, can the party transform itself into one for whom principles trump ethnicity and race? Would a party that currently has voluntary repatriation as one of its policies, consider “British” to include the foreign born, law abiding British citizen? Barnbrook, at one point, spoke of “Londoners […] regardless of creed, color, or identity,” but, since then, he has stated that he will try to ban the wearing of the burka in public. His other stated aims are making St. George’s Day a national holiday, and flying the Union Jack (British) flag over City Hall.
 
A more sensible approach would probably be to concentrate on the mundane stuff of politics, such as public transport, the cleanliness of London streets, etc., or, perhaps, planting some of the fruit trees the BNP promised. The British people, after all, have had a government that has imposed a radical ideology on them for the last decade, and they are unlikely to embrace a party that is so ideological, even if it’s ideology is an opposing one. Moreover, while Barnbrook’s words betray someone who is able to think as a moderate, his style of delivery suggests someone who is anything but, and his speech must surely have confirmed the worst suspicions of those who were previously unsure of, or antagonistic to, the BNP.
 
The election results have thrown up a lot of interesting possibilities – and perhaps especially so for a country headed into recession. The BNP may have reached a point where it either moderates further, or remains a party on the margins. Certainly, it will be more visible and accountable. Labour is now the third most popular party, and the Liberal Democrats are, for once, the second most popular – a position to which they have long aspired. With this added legitimacy, they may soak up more of Labour’s traditional voters in the next couple of years. Presumably Brown will be replaced as leader of his party at some point before the next general election, and Labour will try to blame the Conservatives for every failure form now on – they will probably also try to blame it for the recession. If Cameron fails to show his stronger side, or if Johnson fails to make a mark, Labour may well claw its way back to the top. Though, Johnson, I think, will be a success...

They suspend talks with us. Can anyone explain why it was wise to open ourselves up to this kind of humiliation by holding talks with the mullahs in the first place?

BAGHDAD — As American strikes on Shiite fighters in Baghdad have widened, Iran has suspended talks with the United States on Iraqi security, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday citing the continued offensive as the reason.

The State Department did not comment directly on the talks, but a spokesman, Tom Casey, said, “The fact remains, though, that the Iranian government continues, despite their public statements of support for the Iraqi government, to play this negative role, to provide this kind of assistance to militant groups and to militia groups.”

“It’s something we want to see stopped, and it’s something the Iraqis want to see stopped,” Mr. Casey said.

The suspension of talks by Iran is hard to read. It comes on the heels of a disclosure by the American military that among the evidence it has collected of intervention by Iran is documentation of training camps near Tehran run by Lebanese Hezbollah militants. That information was given to an Iraqi delegation to present to Iranian officials last week. But Iranian politics is a game of shadows with so many crosscutting interests that it is hard to say what Iran’s goal may be.

Hezbollah is no longer described in the press as a terrorist organization, but is now routinely described as a militant Lebanese group.

Two things are clear. The talks have not borne much fruit, so suspending them is almost cost free, at least in the short term. The downside is that the talks have been a way for the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations, to have face-to-face conversations. Several Iraqi politicians said they believed that the Iranian suspension was as much in retaliation for the United States’ criticism of Iran’s nuclear program as it was for Iraq policy.

“Some Iranian officials believe that Iraq is a better location to pressure the Americans over Iran’s diplomatic crisis with them,” Ali al-Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, told Al Hurra, a satellite channel, on Monday evening...

How pleasing to find that the title below contains the word "Burma" rather than hideous Myanmar.  Burma should be the name. Wavell, Slim, Orde Wingate. The Burma Road.  And of course those Route 66 rhymes that always ended with "Burma Shave." Myanmar Shave will not do.

And while we are at it, we insist that Upper Volta be allowed to again become Upper Volta, shedding "Burkina Faso" (which makes one think of a fuse, or "fuso orario"), a name that in the local language means "strong man" while Upper Volta nicely locates the country in space. We've had quite enough of strong men in Africa.

And Sri Lanka -- that will have to go too. It's Ceylon. We won't insist on Serendip. We are reasonable.

And the names recently adopted for other parts of the world also need attention. Ho Chi Minh City is unacceptable, intolerable; Saigon needs to come back soon, not only because Ho Chi Minh should not be honored, but because Saigon better evokes the French theme -- Marguerite Duras and "L'Amant," with tinkles of "La Petite Tonkinoise" as sung by Josephine Bakairr in the background and, in the foreground, Marie Dubas or Edith Piaf singing "Mon Legionnaire."  

Today's a start. Today we have renaming of parts.

An excellent article by Sam Harris, but one caveat must be recorded. Reza Aslan is wrongly described as "a polished, Iranian-born scholar of Islam."  His parents brought him to America when he was small, and he grew up among Iranian exiles who may have called themselves "Muslims" but were people who had fled the Islamic Republic of Iran. Reza Aslan has had no experience of living within a society or state suffused with Islam -- unlike Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or the many Iranians in exile, such as Ali Sina, who tell unpleasant home truths about Islam.

Nor is Reza Aslan a "scholar of Islam." He hardly knows a thing about it. Look at his books. Where is the truthful discussion of what is contained in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira? Where is there any discussion of Jihad, or the dhimmi, that corresponds to something like the truth?  Where is anything that shows any familiarity with the great Western scholars of Islam -- Joseph Schacht, or Snouck Hurgronje, or Arthur Jeffery -- or for that matter, with the main Muslim commentators on the Qur'an, through time and space? Where is there any indication that Reza Aslan has learned about the history of Muslim conquest, or of the subsequent treatment of non-Muslim peoples conquered, from Spain to East Asia, over the past 1300 years? There are only the vaporings of...Reza Aslan, who in his very own website describes himself, baselessly I'm afraid, as an 'internationally-acclaimed scholar of Islam." It's all a fabrication. Reza Aslan is a creature fabricated by Reza Aslan, and the young female bookers on talk shows, asked to come with a personable "Muslim-American" who doesn't have an accent, keep going back to young lochinvar, Reza Aslan -- though whenever he comes up against someone who knows something, such as Sam Harris, Reza Aslan exposes himself as the guide to nothing and to nowhere that he is.

Publishers, eager to have a "young Muslim tell the (comforting) truth about his faith, gave him a $400,000 advance for his first, worthless book, and he hasn't looked back since. He's been collecting degrees -- a true American in that respect, a devout believer in the degree as validation -- and also appearances, that he carefully records and lists at his website, so that you too may be impressed. Why, a half-dozen years ago he tried to learn a little Arabic at a summer course in Cairo, but he's abandoned that. He doesn't need more than a few words for street cred. And now its Iowa, and the Writers' Workshop. Can a professorship in Creative Writing be far behind? For this one of the quadruplets -- the other Bright Young Experts On Islam, from whom Reza Aslan was separated at birth, are Khaled Abou El Fadl, Mark LaVine, and Dinesh D'Souza -- are similarly making out like gangbusters. Here are four easy pieces, previously posted:

A Tribute to Reza Aslan

A Tribute to Mark LaVine 

A Tribute to Scholar of the House Khaled Abou El Fadl

A Tribute to Dinesh D’Souze 

You can see the similiarities of the websites, and of the self-promoters doing all the self-promoting. World's Greatest Authority on Islam, says each one, of himself, at his very own website. At least three of the four must have it wrong. But which three? Or might it, just possibly, be all four? 

THE HAGUE, 06/05/08 - The Party for Freedom (PVV) will ask for an unscheduled debate to be held about a proposal put forward by Welfare State Secretary Jet Bussemaker for paying more attention to the role of Muslims in the liberation of the Netherlands during World War II.

"The role played by ethnic minorities during the war was negligible. But Labour (PvdA) - Bussemaker's party - now wishes to exaggerate this role to please its Islamic voters," PVV MP Martin Bosma claimed yesterday.

On Sunday, Bussemaker proposed that teacher training colleges (PABOs) should include the role played by ethnic minorities in WWII in its course material. In this way, the teachers can then transfer this knowledge to children in their history lessons, which would foster integration.

In some urban schools, it has been difficult for some years to give lessons about the Holocaust because of protest by Islamic pupils. However, people from Morocco and the Antilles were also active in the battle against Nazi Germany, as well as the allies, the state secretary observed in an interview with Muslim broadcaster NMO.

Those people from Morocco and the Antilles were probably Jews. Middle Eastern Jews were very effective fighting for the allied cause. Many spoke German and infiltrated Rommel's army in North Africa for purposes of espionage and sabotage. At one point, however, Montgomery's Arab allies sold the British out to the Germans for 5 bags of tea.

Bosma spoke of "multicultural falsification of history" by Bussemaker. He also claims that she is overstepping her portfolio, as education is not among her tasks. The PVV MP wants to hold an emergency debate on the issue after the current recess with Bussemaker and PvdA Education Minister Ronald Plasterk.

Paddle your own ... er ... cat. (H/t David Thompson): 

The French did have some -- a very few --  Moroccan and Senegalese troops. They were not bravely defending Western liberty; they were in the French army because it paid them. Their military significance was nil.  Their post-war behavior -- especially of the Moroccan "goumiers" in Italy -- was immortalized in Moravia's "Two Women" ("La Ciociaria"), which is about a mother and daughter who are raped by Moroccans. A movie was made of the book; it is usually described as being "about a mother who tries to protect her daughter from the horrors of war." But it is really about Moroccan soldiers raping Italian women.

They were the worst-behaved troops in the post-war period, save possibly for the Muslim troops from Central Asia who went wild in Germany.

From Wikipedia (understating the case):

the military achievements of the Goumiers in Italy were accompanied by widespread reports of war crimes: "...exceptional numbers of Moroccans were executed—many without trial—for allegedly murdering, raping, and pillaging their way across the Italian countryside. The French authorities sought to defuse the problem by importing numbers of Berber women to serve as "camp followers" in rear areas set aside exclusively for the Goumiers."[3] According to Italian sources, more than 7,000 people were raped by Goumiers.[4] [5] The victims, later known in Italy as Marocchinate, included women, children and men, including some priests. The mayor of Esperia (a comune in the Province of Frosinone), reported that in his town, 700 women out of 2,500 inhabitants were raped and that some had died as a result. In northern Latium and southern Tuscany, it is alleged that the Goumiers raped and occasionally killed women and young men after the Germans retreated, including members of partisan formations.[6]

Brian of London writes about this week's Shire Network News:

This week week we conclude our chat with Prof Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal .

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the modern state of Israel, Barry joins us to talk about his latest reprinting of "The Israel Arab Reader". The book provides over 300 original source documents and gives a massive amount of background into the Israeli Arab struggle.

In Blog news this week we cover such delights as the BBC's new advert to remind people in Britain that they can go to jail for not paying up their Telly Tax. Biased BBC has the video.

(Jack Teagarden)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTFTt0fqPos&feature=related