Reported at Times Online:

The remnants of the Islamist militias that controlled much of Somalia until last week dug in to face a final assault from Somali government soldiers and their Ethiopian allies today as the country called for urgent international help.

American warships patrolled off the forested, southern coastline of Somalia to prevent the fighters escaping by sea from Ras Kamboni, a settlement on the Somali Kenyan border where extremist Islamist groups have run training camps since the late 1990s.

Somali commanders said hundreds of Islamist fighters had withdrawn to Ras Kamboni after abandoning Kismayo, the last town under the control of the Islamic Courts Union that was driven out of Mogadishu, the Somali capital, last Thursday.

"They have dug huge trenches around Ras Kamboni but have only two options: to drown in the sea or to fight and die," reported Colonel Barre "Hirale" Aden Shire, the Somali Defence Minister, who said that Ethiopian aircraft would be used in the attack.

New Orleans boasts a street intersection of Race with Camp. That is not a bad summary of this city as it appears to a first-time drop-in visitor — myself, for instance, who spent last Friday and Saturday in the Big Easy with my family.

Race. From the tourist’s-eye view, New Orleans is a black city. The servicepeople at the airport, the hotel, concessions, stores, museums, and fast-food outlets are uniformly black. Most of the people you pass on the street, outside the tourist precincts, are black. I think this is the blackest American city I have been in.

Camp. I’m sorry to say I have low tolerance for “camp” in the second of the group of meanings logged on Dictionary.com: “something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement, as by virtue of its being artlessly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly ingenuous and sentimental.” New Orleans is full of that kind of camp. The whole Mardi Gras business is pure camp. It always has been: down in the waterfront district by Jackson Park there is actually a museum of Mardi Gras, which we visited. The Mardi Gras thing goes back forever (well, to 1699), and it’s been camp, camp, camp all the way.

It is, of course, grossly unfair to pass any kind of judgment on a city after a two-day visit. I’m sure New Orleans has delights I did not savor, depths I did not plumb, charms I did not perceive. After the horrors of Katrina, there is, too, some discomfort in passing any negative comment at all on the city — something like kicking a man when he’s down...

the rest is here

No, that wouldn't be news, but this story from the NY Post is:

ID THEFT 101: BEAUTY CONS HER WAY ONTO IVYS' ROLLS AS AN ED. RINGER

A cunning co-ed con artist was able to dupe some of the nation's top universities - including Harvard and Columbia - into granting her admission by stealing other people's identities, including that of a woman who has been missing for more than seven years, investigators have discovered.

Esther Elizabeth Reed, 28, managed to attend Columbia University as a graduate student for two years under the name Brooke Henson before investigators caught wind of the scam last summer.

The real Henson had disappeared from her home in Travelers Rest, S.C., in 1999, and has not been seen since.

In a strange twist, Reed has been listed as a missing person herself since 1999, when she was last seen leaving a Seattle courthouse, where she was facing charges for forging checks she had stolen from her sister.

Since then, the brazen brunette beauty's path has been tortuous, but she appears to have used sophisticated and elaborate scams to steal several identities that she then used to gain entrance to California State University at Fullerton, Harvard and Columbia, where she studied criminology and psychology, investigators said.

The rest is here.

John Derbyshire has won the Euler Book Prize from the Mathematical Association of America for his 2003 book Prime Obsession.

Scenario: A newly hired campus security guard spends his first night on the job trapped alone in a university library.
Plot: New guard spends all but the first minute of the film sleeping on an empty bookshelf. None of the library's three remaining books comes alive, but one of them mysteriously ends up in a toilet.  (Identity of book withheld pending notification of relatives.) Still sleeping, the guard is carried out of the library the next morning by armed members of the university's Sensitivity Service.  Library opens on time; no interruption in scheduled classes.
Running time: 480 minutes.  (Upgrade to subtitled edition available.  Director's Cut scheduled for 4/1/07 release.)

Prof. John Lewis has written a very intriguing piece for The Objective Standard and the goes on to answers some questions his piece provoked at Jihad Watch:

Islam is a way of life, not a religion as distinguished from state. But it is not true that Muslims cannot live under non-Muslim laws; the majority in western countries do. If they are compromising their religion, then so be it. Setting the enemy as Islamic Totalitarianism would allow us to end attempts to import Islamic Law into our own country, and to empower our allies to end it themselves in their own countries. It would allow individual Muslims to comply, and would reveal those who refuse. It would also demonstrate the failure of Islam as a political movement, and thus challenge the premise, in the minds of many, that the Islamic Totalitarians are some kind of misguided idealists, right in principle but taken to extremes.

As to the issue of realism: there can be no realistic discussion of a proper “strategy” (a means to attain policy ends) without proper definition of the end that the strategy is intended to achieve. There is nothing more un-realistic than to try to create a plan without knowing where we are going -- or to assume that no plan is possible, since reality is “really” always in flux. The realism that we need is the recognition that those supporting Political Islam -- meaning, not a type of Islam, but rather Islam considered with respect to its political characteristics -- are the real enemy. I'll gladly listen to someone who has a different strategy for eliminating Islam as a political power all the while ending the threat to us -- but I’ve not yet heard it.

In the long run, however, this is an intellectual battle. My stress on integrity means that we must understand the issues, and talk the talk as well as walking the walk. We have not properly stated our own goodness, and why we have a right to defend ourselves. It is the job of the intellectuals to state and defend these truths philosophically. If we do not present an alternative to the Qu’ran, and are unwilling to destroy those building nuclear bombs in order to impose it, then why should anyone re-write it? This may take five generations -- but it will never happen if the political success of Islamic Totalitarianism is allowed to continue.

Prof. John Lewis writes:

We have not properly stated our own goodness, and why we have a right to defend ourselves. It is the job of the intellectuals to state and defend these truths philosophically.

Prof. Lewis correctly identifies intellectual core issues.  Put differently, the question is how to convince enough thinking people that it is indeed the case that Muslims operating politically (at ballot box, in the courts, or in the cockpit of United 93) in the West mean business, have meant it for decades, and intend to go on meaning it for generations.

Sophists reign among the intellectual classes.  They are stuck on "George Washington equals bin Laden," "Bible equals Qur'an," and other such relativistic formulations.  They are not disposed intellectually to argue goodness, much less defend anything other than their paycheck and benefits packages.  And from that crowd is drawn expert opinion for the masses.  Result?  Nihilism imposed from the top on down.

Except for this, this happy* Internet.  (Yes, conservative talk radio is huge; Fox cable is huge.  Neither, however, can afford to devote much time to reasoned debate.)  Outside of print, which medium has dared to frame the question as Lewis and many others now do?

* fortunate: resulting unexpectedly in something pleasant or welcome (a happy coincidence)

From The Australian

ISLAMIC leaders are demanding an explanation from Foreign Minister Alexander Downer after plans for the Saudi Government to invest in the construction of an Adelaide mosque were vetoed by Canberra. The Foreign Minister revealed yesterday that the Government objected to a proposal for Saudi cash to be injected into development of the new mosque, which is believed to be located at Park Holme in Adelaide's southern suburbs.

Mr Downer said federal authorities had also been investigating broad concerns on funding sourced from the Middle East after concerns that mosques could become breeding grounds for extremists.  "Obviously we don't want to see any extremist organisation penetrate into Australia," he said.

Construction was halted after the laying of a concrete slab and prayers are being conducted in a recreation room. Mr Vachor said yesterday the Islamic Society of South Australia would seek an urgent meeting with Mr Downer to determine the reasons behind the Government's decision.

The mosque is the same holy place used by Iraqi Kurd Warya Kanie, who came to Australia as a refugee in 2003 and was granted citizenship two years later. Mr Vachor said Mr Kanie, being held by coalition forces in Iraq, regularly attended the Park Holme mosque. Mr Kanie, 39, told his family in Adelaide that he was going to look for a wife, but he allegedly told a friend that he was leaving Australia "to go on jihad".

The Foreign Minister said the Government had discussed funding of mosques in Australia with the Saudi Government "in particular". He said: "This is of course a matter that goes back well before 9/11. There has been concern internationally, not specifically to Australia, about some elements in Saudi Arabia which is the heartland of Wahibbism and Sufism ... trying to spread that particular extremist interpretation of Islam. Historically the Saudi Arabian Government has provided funding (to overseas mosques), I'm not saying there's anything illegitimate about that ... but we can obviously express a view to the Saudi Arabian Government."

Oh that the British government would take the same view.

AP is pushing this innocuous headline: "Miscommunication Cited in Port Alert."  Sounds harmless (though one Connecticut resident who was preparing to go on a pleasure cruise when the port was shut is still freaked, judging by AP's reuse of her quote).

But scroll down a few graphs and you see this:

The men in the truck - two Iraqis and one Lebanese national - were in local police custody, but authorities said no federal charges were expected. Officials initially said the men, all permanent U.S. residents, had been caught trying to slip past a checkpoint at the port's entrance.

The truck's contents - electrical automotive parts in a 40-foot container - matched the driver's cargo manifest, said Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Nancy Goldberg.

A port security officer became suspicious when the truck driver could not produce proper paperwork in a routine inspection to enter the port about 8 a.m., Goldberg said.

The driver also indicated he was alone in the truck, though security officers found two other men in the cab, she said. The two passengers, ages 28 and 29, were a friend and a relative of the 20-year-old Iraqi driver, she said.

"Due to a miscommunication between the gate security personnel and the truck driver, we believe there was a discrepancy in the number of people in the vehicle," Goldberg said. "This, and the fact that one of the individuals did not have any form of ID, raised our level of concern."

Were these "drivers" a) stupid and/or arrogant in neglecting to carry ID into a U.S. port during the "war on terror," b) just on their way to a rally in support of the six imams who freaked out US Airways the other week?

I haven’t seen Ugly Betty, the US television series that everyone is talking about at the moment, but I know a bit about it. Betty, the “Ugly Duckling”, is supposed to be a dumpy, frumpy Mexican-American, who, with her greater integrity, defeats the vicious beauties at a New York fashion magazine. So far, so clichéd, the only twist being that she doesn’t turn into a beautiful swan. Of course the programme may still be good – stock characters can be funny, but there’s an obvious problem. “Ugly” Betty isn’t ugly at all – she’s pretty, but with marginally ugly specs, ugly braces and nerdy clothes. Get rid of the braces and she could do that old trick of taking off her glasses to gasps of “Oh my God, but you’re … well not quite as beautiful as all the other actresses, but really quite nice.”

Ugly Betty indeed. You don’t know the meaning of the word. Look at this:

That’s sitcom ugly – not deformed or repulsive, just unprepossesessing and very human.

Britain does ugly far better than America, and not just on screen. So says Helen Rumbelow in The Times:

For decades Britain has played the unsightly country cousin to its more image-obsessed ally; our drab soap operas glorifying ugly, where glossy Hollywood shows sing positive hymns to cosmetic surgery. As any visitor to America knows, we are the butt of their jokes about bad teeth and hair. I say, let’s flip that greasy forelock out of our pallid faces, and start smiling…

If you lined up US presidents of the past few decades and squared them up against their British counterparts it would look like an episode of Beauty and the Geek. In America’s parade you have pretty boy JFK, the silver fox Gerald Ford, former matinee idol Ronald Reagan, and ’ole blue eyes Bill Clinton. Britain’s line, well, from Macmillan on they look like a team of lady pensioner golfers waiting to tee off, only with less manly jaws.

I don’t mean to be smug, because it is possible Britain has gone to the opposite extreme. We rejoice in the masses of the average and plain, such as our “pale and interesting” indie bands that are one of our main cultural exports. But we may be suspicious of beauty. Yes, there are countless studies proving that attractive people are more likely to get a job, get promoted, and even to get off in a court case. But I think what they mean by attractive is a mixture of grooming and inoffensiveness, that you are not so freaky-looking as to frighten the horses. Consider some of the most successful individuals in British life. There are few oil paintings among them: Alan Sugar, with his face like a current bun? The crumpled-bed that is Bob Geldof? Steve “steak tartare” McClaren? Do an inventory of the highest status people in your workplace and I think you’ll agree ugly is no bar to success, but beauty may be.

Deborah Ross, writing in The Spectator, noted that glamorous actresses who deglamourise for character roles always win lots of awards and get called brave, whereas most of us go around being our unglamorous selves every day and get nothing. Go on, America. Be really brave and find a really Ugly Betty.

Re: Mary's post, Pretty Betty.

Allen Ginsberg (left) with his lifelong love and

companion, poet Peter Orlovsky.

It smells just fine up here in Brooklyn Heights, but there's a strange smell this morning in Manhattan:

Authorities were investigating the source of a mysterious gas-like odor Monday that stretched across a large part of Manhattan.

The Fire Department began getting calls about the odor around 9 a.m. Monday, said spokesman Tim Hinchey. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey suspended some of its PATH commuter train service between New Jersey and Manhattan as a precaution.

Jersey City, N.J., mayor's spokeswoman Maria Pignataro said officials there were told the odor was due to a gas leak in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, near Greenwich Village.

Consolidated Edison was investigating, utility spokeswoman Joy Faber said.

"The smell was very strong. It was very scary," said Yolanda Van Gemd, an administrator at ASA, a business school near the Empire State Building that was evacuated as a precaution.

In August, seven people were treated at hospitals after a gaseous smell in the boroughs of Queens and Staten Island.

(I'm trying to locate a photo of a smell.  No luck so far--just lots of unflattering pics of people smelling things.)

From the BBC

A court case that has provoked international debate over the issue of press freedom has opened in Morocco.

Nichane magazine's editor and one of its reporters are accused of defaming Islam and damaging public morality in an article about religious jokes. The authorities in Morocco immediately closed the magazine down and withdrew copies of it from newspaper stands.

Driss Ksikes and Sanaa al-Aji face up to five years in jail and hefty fines if they are convicted.

The article that has caused such an outcry looked at popular jokes on religion, sex and politics. The journalists, who have received death threats, say they were not making fun of religion, but merely trying to see what light the jokes shed on Moroccan society.

But the government does not see it that way, and says that attacking religion is one of the most serious offences a journalist can commit.

Samples of John Derbyshire’s lucidity on other matters can be found at this website. And the interviews he has given about the book give one reason to believe that his Euler-Prize-winning book, about a famous hypothesis offered in the nineteenth century by Bernhard Riemann about the distribution of prime numbers, will not disappoint.

Those shy about carrying a book on the Riemann Hypothesis needn’t worry. This book can be read on the bus, in a subway car, while sitting at Starbuck's nursing a Venti in the De Sitter Space provided, and no one will think you are hoity-toitingly showing off by reading a book on the Riemann Hypothesis, when you should be bringing to the table the pieties of "The Audacity of Hope" or the feel-goodness of "Reading Lolita in Tehran." Nosy parkers on the uptown express, or the crosstown bus, partygoers jostling you while attending a function at Zeta’s ( the place just written up in “Vanity Fair,” the one that Lapo Elkann and Gianni Fibonacci go to, or am I thinking of another place?), will judge that book by its cover, and assume it is the novel that was turned into, or created out of, the script of some Hollywood thriller -- that really scary one starring Jack or Christopher or Nathalie or Hilary, two-thumbed up by all homo-pollex critics -- because what else could such a book possibly be, bearing such a brividish title as "Prime Obsession”?

But you, the reader, will know how wide of the mark they are. You’ll be lost in the book’s thought – the thought of its mathematician-protagonists, and the thought of the explicator-writer who makes the thoughts of those others intelligible to you. And you’ll be taken far away (“There is no frigate like a book, to take us lands away.”) in space, to Euler in Russia, to Gauss in Germany, to Riemann in Prussia, and also in time, traveling back to the eighteenth century and nineteenth centuries, and then beyond the present, where if the Riemann Hypothesis has been solved, then that solution must mean something for other mathematical matters.

Those in the education industry (Department of Smooth Sailing), who have all the time and grants and sabbaticals and exploitable graduate students in the world, so often nowadays produce stuff about art, literature, history, all kinds of things, on their errand into the wilderness of post-modernist discourse, johnny-appleseeding the trivial, the obvious, the tendentious, the flatly silly and wrong (see Homi Bhabha, see Linda Nochlin, see anyone who quotes with approval Edward Said or sedulously apes the latest French fashions to have appeared on the intellectual catwalk), in a language that is not English. In the case of “Prime Obsession” a difficult and important subject is written about in a language that makes that subject accessible and comprehensible, the result of both the lucid prose, and the sensitive gauging by its author of how much explanation will be necessary, and sufficient, for non-mathematicians, which is what almost all of us are.

All of which is reason to echo Rebecca or to rebecco her, and her offer, or proffer, to John Derbyshire, of Congratulations.

Congratulations to John Derbyshire for winning the Euler prize. I hope you get a good eulergy.

I will read the book, but not in Starbucks, which is a total rip off - did you know that there's now one in the Forbidden City? - and certainly not "hoity-toitingly". 

I'm not given to hoity-toititude, but if I were, I would probably act hoity-toitily rather than hoity-toitingly. Hoity-toitily toting my tome. Then again, I've never hoity-toited, so I don't know if hoity-toiting is the way to go. Can you condemn Kipling if you've never kippled?

I'm not sure if I'll be any good at hoity-toiting. But it wouldn't hoit to try.

From a challenging letter Gates of Vienna submitted to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) on the subject of Islam vs. women:

There is no doubt that you, as our sole Muslim member of Congress, could bring to bear a high level of influence on Iran and other Muslim countries, in order to make the situation for women in these countries more humane.

If you were to use your bully pulpit to speak out about the plight of women under sharia law — especially in Iran and Pakistan — you would be a powerful influence for good.

Read the rest here.

One of the comments raised a good question: Why, Mr. Ellison, did the six imams airport melee occur in your district?

From Rep. Ellison's website:

I believe that peace throughout the world should be the guiding principle of the United States. To this end working towards a lasting peace in the Middle East should be one of the United States' most focused goals. Peace is necessary for both Israeli and Palestinian people, and I wholeheartedly support peace movements in Israel and throughout the region.

It would be helpful if Rep. Ellison had defined "peace" and named the "peace movements" to which he refers.  He did not.

Elsewhere on his website, Rep. Ellison makes the sole mention of his faith in Islam:

People draw strength and moral courage from a variety of religious traditions. Mine have come from both Catholicism and Islam. I was raised Catholic and later became a Muslim while attending Wayne State University. I am inspired by the Qur'an's message of an encompassing divine love, and a deep faith guides my life every day.

Question:  Is it wrong to believe you imply that Catholicism and Islam are equivalent?  Would you be willing to elaborate?

Unlikely situation:  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asks Rep. Ellison if there is any part of the Qur'an Rep. Ellison disagrees with, and if Qur'an 3:28* among other lines will prevent Rep. Ellison from working on committees with fellow Democrats.

* Let not the believers take for friends or helpers unbelievers rather than believers.  If any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah; except by way of precaution, that ye may guard yourselves from them."

Care to comment on this report?

Islamic taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are refusing passengers carrying alcohol and blind folks with seeing-eye dogs because the animals' saliva is sacrilege according to Sharia law.

The enterprising Muslims during the past year have stranded 100 passengers a month, sometimes for more than an hour, according to the Metropolitan Airports Commission, since three-fourths of the 900 taxi drivers servicing the airport are Somali Muslims who have decided to participate in the new discipline.

To make matters worse, a local outreach director of the ever-obliging Council on American-Islamic Relations, Damon Drake, dismissed the issue, saying, "Now that the Muslims are here, they need to be accommodated."

The issue originated 12 months ago when the airports commission received a fatwa, or religious edict, from the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society. It stated that "Islamic jurisprudence" prohibits taxi drivers to carry passengers with alcohol "because it involves cooperating in sin."

[...]

What if Islamic drivers deny the right of transportation to women wearing short skirts, robed priests and rabbis, or homosexual couples, as indeed has happened in Minneapolis?

Read the rest of Youssef Ibrahim's MEMRI column here.

Contact Rep. Ellison here.

This just in at The New York Sun:

A package that was going to be loaded onto a cruise ship at the Port of Miami tested positive for plastic explosives Monday, the Coast Guard said.

The package was tested six times, and each time it came back positive for the military-grade explosive known as C4, said Petty Officer James Judge.

The package was destroyed, and a Miami-Dade County police bomb squad was inspecting the remains to determine if there were any explosives inside.

Authorities have now announced it was definitely a false positive result for explosives; the package apparently contained “sprinkler parts.”

Police spokesman Bobby Williams said the instruments used to test the package sometimes give false positives.

"We still need to check it out," Mr. Williams said.

The package was included in provisions that were to be loaded aboard Royal Caribbean International's Majesty of the Seas. Explosives detection instruments gave the positive reading about 2:00 p.m., the cruise line said.

The FBI was monitoring the situation, spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said.

The developments came a day after three Middle Eastern men in a cargo truck sparked a brief terrorism scare at the port. After a bomb squad search, authorities concluded that the men were carrying automotive parts and that the scare stemmed from miscommunication.

Update via LGF:  Authorities have now announced it was definitely a false positive result for explosives; the package apparently contained “sprinkler parts.”

If I didn't think that the universe itself and everything in it is merely coincidental, I'd think we were being probed by people who didn't have our best interests in mind.

Breaking news from The Times

A German court has handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a Moroccan convicted of helping the September 11 hijackers.

A court in Hamburg handed down the maximum possible sentence for the offence of being an accessory to murder today to Mounir el Motassadeq, who was a close friend of the suicide pilots.

Motassadeq was found guilty of financing the men and helping to provide the trappings of a normal student life to them as they prepared their attack. Motassadeq's case had been referred to the Hamburg court for sentencing today after he was convicted by a federal appeals court of the offence in November.

The court convicted el Motassadeq as an accessory to the murder of 246 passengers and crew members aboard all four jetliners used in the attacks and ordered the state court to set a new sentence.

El Motassadeq was a close friend of pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah when they lived and studied in Hamburg. He has acknowledged training at an al Qaida camp in Afghanistan and that he was close to the three hijackers, but insists he knew nothing of their plans. However, the federal appeals court said evidence showed el Motassadeq knew that the hijackers planned to hijack and crash planes.

It found that his actions - for example, transferring money, and helping the hijackers keep up the appearance of being regular university students by paying tuition and rent fees - facilitated the attacks. The federal court also said it was irrelevant to el Motassadeq's guilt whether he knew of the plot's timing, size or targets.

Pendle Hill, Lancashire, mentioned here, was home to a number of witches:

Alizon Device was hanged for witchcraft at Lancaster gaol in 1612. Her voluntary confession to bewitching the pedlar John Law first brought to the attention of the authorites, the alledged activities of witches in the Forest of Pendle.

Alizon [referred to throughout as 'the examinate'] lived at Malkin Tower with her mother Elizabeth Device, her grandmother Elizabeth Southerns, alias Demdike, her brother James and sister Jennet. Elizabeth and James were hanged for witchcraft at Lancaster and Demdike died in gaol awaiting trial.

I don't want to google - Esmerelda, you will know - is that Alison Gross (in the song) that lives in yon tower, the ugliest witch in the north country? (She trysted me one day up to her bower, and many a fair speech she made to me. And you, and many, many others.)

...And she further sayth, that one john nutter of the bulhole in pendle aforesaid, had a cow which was sicke, & requested this examinats grand-mother to amend the said cow; and her said graund-mother said she would, and so her said graund-mother about ten of the clocke in the night, desired this examinate to lead her forth; which this examinate did, being then blind: and her graund-mother did remaine about halfe an houre forth: and this examinates sister did fetch her in againe; but what she did when she was so forth, this examinate cannot tell. But the next morning, this examinate heard that the sayd cow was dead. And this examinate verily thinketh, that her sayd graund-mother did bewitch the sayd cow to death.

Well, you can't argue with that. How unlike the home life of our own dear Lancastrians, or our Lancastrians-in-The-Smoke, which does not have the same ring to it as "john nutter of the bullhole". Especially if you stutter and spoonerise. And that sister, Jennet? Sounds a bit like rennet - shades of Blackadder and Cold Comfort Farm.

Alison Device - with a name like that, what chance did she have? She hath followed too much the devices and desires of her familiar, left undone those things she ought to have done, and in consequence done those things she ought not to have done. Moving from north to south, in one sense but not the other:

There once was a girl from Devizes

Whose tits were of different sizes

One was small, hardly there at all

The other was big and won prizes

Oh my, what a rotten song, what a rotten song....time for bed...