According to the Assyrian website ankawa.com, a 14 year old Christian Assyrian boy, Ayad Tariq, from Baqouba, Iraq was decapitated at his work place on October 21.

Ayad Tariq was working his 12 hour shift, maintaining an electric generator, when a group of disguised Muslim insurgents walked in at the beginning of his shift shortly after 6 a.m. and asked him for his ID.

According to another employee who witnessed the events, and who hid when he saw the insurgents approach, the insurgents questioned Ayad after seeing that his ID stated "Christian", asking if he was truly a "Christian sinner." Ayad replied "yes, I am Christian but I am not a sinner." The insurgents quickly said this is a "dirty Christian sinner!" Then they proceeded to each hold one limb, shouting "Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" while beheading the boy - from this news item

This has been happening all the time, all over the Muslim Middle East. An Armenian from Haleb told me that, years the civil war in Lebanon, he was visiting an area of Lebanon right on the border with Syria. Passing a Druse village, he saw, right outside, dangling from a pole, the body of a very young boy, a Christian boy (under the age of ten), with some kind of warning placard affixed. Though I have known him for years, he never had spoken of this before, but did so this summer, apparently prompted by my approvingly recounting Walid Jumblatt's criticism of Hezbollah. He did not think this an isolated case. He did think that I still did not quite get the ways that prevail in the Muslim Middle East, even by quasi-Muslims such as Druse who can naturally be affected by, and adopt, the same ways, or reflect the same atttitudes.

Look at the ads all over Europe for cheap holidays in wonderful safe Egypt (stay in those Red Sea resorts, they've never had a problem, or visit Luxor before the tourists discover it) and Tunisia (les gentils organisateurs vous attendent, mesdames et messieurs, and gentilles ones as well), and Turkey (visit the wonders of Turkey -- that is, the museum at Zeugma, with whatever the Packard Foundation managed to rescue from the rapidly rising waters, and all the remains of Greek, and Roman, and Byzantine civilization that managed not to be destroyed by the hostile or at times indifferent Islamic one. Forget about the odd bomb on Istiqlal Caddesi, or thrown at Western sunworshippers on a too-bikini-ed beach. Come to Egypt, come to Tunisia, come to Turkey. Explore Petra, rose-red city half as old as time, and don't worry about the taxi drivers. Half of them are security personnel, keeping tabs on the other half -- you see, we in Jordan know our fellow Muslims, and we don't have oil, so of course we need tourism and for that reason, will try to keep you safe. Nothing personal, you understand. We just can't lose a major source of income.

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan --  In a huge cavity dug into the side of a cliff, workers search through the rubble to exhume the remains of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan.

At the scene of the crime carried out in 2001 all evidence points to Osama Bin Laden as the mastermind. "This is the terrorism of the Taliban," says Rahim, an official at the work site in front of the empty niche of the biggest of the two statues, one of which stood 55 meters (182 feet) tall and the other 38 meters. - from this news item

The article below was first posted five months ago, but rather than rewrite the thing ab ovo (possibly the ovum struthionis in the Montefeltro altarpiece of Piero della Francesca, identified as such by Millard Meiss), here it is again.

"Who will save the monuments?

The threat to Western art posed by the Islamization of Europe:

Already statues have been vandalized by Muslims in public places, and in churches, in both France and Italy. The destruction of the monuments and artifacts and hence part of the histories of Infidels, that so many Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists in the Middle East, in North Africa, in the Balkans and southeastern Europe, in Central Asia and Hindustan and in southeast Asia know well, now has come to Western Europe. What will happen in Italy, where every street corner in Rome has something that could be damaged by determined Muslims? What will happen to the churches, to the frescoes (including that which Muslims have been taped planning to destroy in Bologna), to the paintings in the Louvre, the Prado, the National Gallery, the Rijksmuseum, the Alte Pinakothek, the Uffizi? Has any organized association of museum curators, or of art scholars, even dared to think of organizing a conference on the protection of art in Europe, and the prohibitions of Islam against sculpture of all kinds, against paintings of living creatures?

Is anyone at all thinking about this, and contacting others? What about Philippe de Montebello or J. Carter Brown or Anne d'Harnoncourt or any other museum directors or retired directors, or any celebrated collectors, or those who already belong to such groups as Save Venice or Save Florence or FAI or Save Art here and there and everywhere? What about those who fund foundations that will pay to rescue Roman mosaics from the rising man-made floods that covered Zeugma, or the Temples near Aswan, but have a new kind of inundation to deal with, the flood-tide of Islam's adherents, who to the extent that they take their Islam seriously, can only threaten Western art, as they once not only threatened, but managed to destroy, so much of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Greco-Bactrian monuments, stupas, manuscripts, temples, artifacts, to erase, or to appropriate as their own, the signs and symbols of anything pre-Islamic or non-Islamic?

This cannot wait. Raising the matter publicly, noisily, so that everyone is made aware of the problem, so that Muslims themselves (the same ones who pretended to be outraged by the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas but in truth helped the Taliban, as those Pakistani and Saudi engineers did, and were secretly pleased at the result) are put on the defensive, and forced either to admit to or to change their ways.
Raising the issue will offend Muslims -- or at least, many will feign indignation. But why? The issue is real. The prohibition is real. Any Muslim can find it in Qaradawi's handy guide to what is halal and what haram. Any Muslim can read what the Egyptian Grand Muft said recently about this. Muslims have been acting on those prohibitions for 1350 years. Now they exist, in large numbers, within the Lands of the Infidels, the Bilad al-kufr. This poses many problems for Infidels, their laws, customs, understandings, political and social institutions, physical security -- and for their artistic heritage, the heritage that, supposedly, belongs to everyone.

Time to bring it all out into the open. Who will be brave enough to discuss it? If not the heads of American or European museums (who, for all I know, are eager to obtain Arab money for some pathetic "Islamic art" wing and as craven in their pursuit of such money, and hence in their willingness to remain silent on all sorts of questions, as college and university presidents whose every statement is cleared with the Development Office, that beating heart of the modern university) then who?

It could be one of those scholars grateful for the training he received, perhaps at the Warburg or at the Courtauld, in the days when that instruction would have been given by some unforgettable, irreplaceable Jewish refugee from another totalitarian belief-system, that which ruled Germany and almost wrecked European civilization.

There is one celebrated art historian whose clashes with the Belle Arti in Italy have been based not on any deliberate damage inflicted, but rather on the unintentional damage that may have been caused by well-intentioned cleaning that may have removed what the artists in question (Michelangelo, Jacopo della Quercia) foresaw, and intended to be, the pleasing effects created by the patina of time on the Sistine Chapel, on the giant statue of Ilaria del Carretto in Lucca.

So perhaps someone will kindly pass on this suggestion to Professor James Beck of Columbia. He would at once grasp the gravity of the problem that large numbers of Islam's adherents, now in Western Europe, pose to our civilization and its artifacts, as the behavior of Muslims who conquered initially through the sword, and completed their dominance through demographic conquest demonstrates.

And as the boys from the Belle Arti, and some Japanese businessmen who were awarded proprietary rights in the Cappella Sistina reproductions have discovered to their own great dismay, nothing and nobody intimidates James Beck."

[Posted at June 14, 2006 09:17 AM]

Few of us, no matter how good our computer firewall, have avoided being offered "v1Ahgrra" for our "ercetoin" problems.

Cunning spammers, possibly the most unscrupulous kind of spammers, penetrate anti-spam software by random incorrect spelling. I got an email today, offering a "tonic tab created to help your pennis":

No price was given for this "ground breaking thing", but I imagine it is a case of "take care of the pennis and the pounds will look after themselves."

A Palestinian home-made rocket landed in an open area near "a strategic site" in the south of Israel's coastal city of Ashkelon, Israeli Radio quoted Israeli army sources on Monday.

Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad (Holy War), claimed responsibility. In a statement faxed to the press, the brigades said their fighters launched a medium-range rocket on Ashkelon at about 6:00 a.m. - from this news item

Fast Jihad, Slow Jihad.

Even if there were a dime's worth of difference, it wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel.

Or, as the Gazan psychiatrist could but I very much doubt would tell his patients when they come in, wondering whether to pledge their allegiance to less corrupt Hamas or more corrupt Fatah, the Fast Jihad or the Slow Jihad:

Oedipus, schmoedipus, so long as he loves his mother.

Strong reaction to a plan for a women-only park in Istanbul has focused attention on the divisions between Turkey’s secularists and supporters of the ruling AK Party, which has its roots in political Islam. - from this news item

Relatives and friends of two French teenagers who were electrocuted as they fled from police a year ago have gathered in Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris. A plaque was unveiled in front of their school, and a wreath-laying ceremony was held at the power sub-station where the teenagers tried to hide.

The deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore sparked three weeks of violent riots in France's poor suburbs as the young and unemployed vented their anger over what they saw as lack of opportunity and racial discrimination. The crowd gathered in silent prayer wearing t-shirts with the slogan "Dead for nothing". - from this news item

Monumental brass.

Not France. Not the French. This particular mayor, in this particular town. And all others who think like him. And even if there are millions of them, there are other millions in France who do not think like him, who are appalled at the whole thing. Some, in their desperation, run to Le Pen. Others, more assured and collected, support Philippe de Villiers or, in the belief that they must support someone who will win and not to support someone who may influence policy but cannot win, will go, at this point, with Sarkozy. Many now wish they could undo the last 40 years of crazed immigration policies. Some would like to strangle all those who undid France, in such wanton fashion. But why do some attack "France"? Why attack "the French"? Attack those who deserve it. They are everywhere. And everywhere there are those who don't deserve it, and don't deserve to pay for the stupidity or venality or fearfulness of others.

The Esdrujula Explanation, one more time: Stupidity, Cupidity, Timidity.

How is it that 20 tons of explosives, not to mention many guns of every kind, have been smuggled into Gaza from Egypt? Can it really be that the Egyptians have made every effort to prevent it, or have they in fact done little or nothing to prevent such arms smuggling, and in fact possibly even aided it? What has Egypt done to merit any confidence that it will fulfill a single one of its solemn obligations under the Camp David Accords? It has prevented Egyptians from visiting Israel, prevented Israelis from participating in Cairo film and book festivals, allowed press campaigns that vilify Israel, put on the state television a series based on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and made Egypt a world center of antisemitism.

And the American government, which pushed the terms of that disastrous accord (if the Israelis were going to give up the Sinai for the second time, to Egypt, a country which acquired most of the Sinai only in 1922, and to which by its aggressive acts launched against Israel from Sinai had forfeited any title to the superior one of Israel as the winner in several wars of self-defense) has done nothing in the nearly thirty years that have passed to make Egypt obey fulfill those obligations -- and apparently lost much interest in such fulfillment just as soon as Israel, in three tranches, handed over the entire Sinai with its oilfields, and its roads, all built by Israel.

Now the Israelis, some report, wish to finally put paid to those many smuggling tunnels. Like idiots, some Israeli journalists have reported on this, and now, by alerting Egypt, have possibly made it politically and militarily impossible for Israel to do what it has every right to do, and should do.

Those journalists in Israel should think a bit. Not "well done, thou good and faithful servant." But shame and disgust at their heedless reporting.

And Israel should not be deterred if the Egyptians are moved up. The tunnels are there. If they are not to be destroyed, the alternative is to retake Gaza. Let that be made clear, to Egypt and to an American administration that is at a complete loss as to what to do, and so, in its failing and its flailing, unable to extricate itself from Iraq apparently because of the loss of face it fears it would have to endure (when, in fact, six months after such withdrawal the chaos and confusion and sectarian troubles all over the Muslim world would demonstrate the real "victory" achieved, and inevitably achieved, but never understood or recognized, once Saddam Hussein was removed), will try to pressure Israel all it can, in the hope that somehow -- doesn't Brzezinski believe it? And Scowcroft? and Baker and the Baker Commission? -that in some undefinable way, that will lessen the Jihad when, in fact, it is the reverse. The Lesser Jihad against Israel does not cause the Greater Jihad against Infidels but is only a subset that started earlier, before the OPEC revenues and Muslim migration allowed for an enlarged world-wide battlefield. The Lesser Jihad against Israel has, in fact, for a long time actually protected the West, serving as a lightning-rod for the general anti-Infidel fervor that is not a product of "extremist" Islam, or "Wahhabi" Islam, or "Wahhabi Salafist" Islam, or of something some call "Islamism," but rather of Islam. Unmodified, unadjectivized, unsuffixed Islam.

Brian of London writes: This week we interviewed Reut Cohen of UC Irvine about the antisemitic goings on there as reported in LGF. 

Latest episode is up here.

TAJ Din al-Hilali has praised militant jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling them men of the highest order for fighting against coalition forces - which include Australian soldiers - to "liberate" their homelands.

In an interview on Arabic radio two weeks ago, the imam based at Sydney's Lakemba mosque said he was opposed to terror attacks in Madrid, London and New York but strongly endorsed fighters in the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Afghanistan. - from this news item

In the bad old days of the Cold War, one used to worry about Soviet propagandists making hay while the sun shone down on classes at Patrice Lumumba University. Now in the early days of the Jihad that always existed in posse, but in the modern world only with the arrival of OPEC revenues and the large-scale presence of Muslims in Infidel lands, it is not propagandists at Lumumba, speaking untruthfully about the evils of Western capitalism and the wonders of Soviet communism, but preachers conveying truthfully the tenets and attitudes of Islam at the Lakemba Mosque, that are, or should be, the object of concern and vigilance.

Is it? Is it, and a thousand other mosques in Austalia, or tens of thousands of mosques elsewhere in the Bilad al-kufr, all under strict surveillance and, as they must be, permanently, because the texts of Islam are immutable, and permanent, so that one can expect, again and again, sermons based on those texts to inevitably appear, and to work their malevolent way into the receptive minds, and then the actions, of Believers all over the innocent and largely still uncomprehending West?

Ten to fifteen years ago the various political parties of Italy had a Re-Naming Day in Eden. The parties of the left ended up with such names as L'Uliva and La Margherita and La Rosa. Only one party, Rifondazione Comunista, failed to do so. Nowadays, when you read about the parties maneuvering and squabbling over power in Italy, you might be forgiven for thinking you have mistakenly come to a meeting of some Horticultural Society, or dropped in on Amos Pettingill's White Flower Farm.

The parties on the right did the same -- the Christian Democrats were no more, and the party that was once the truly fascistic (in the days of Giorgio Almirante) Movimento Italiano Sociale, the "missini," was given not merely a new name, Alleanza Nazionale, but a new moral structure, especially under the perfectly respectable --and in many ways attractive -- Fini. So strong was Fini and so open in his denunciation of policies associated with real Fascism, and especially of any hint of antisemitism, and broke so openly with the hideous fascist past, that Alessandra Mussolini left the party in figlia-di-papa fury.

The complexities of Italian politics, the difference between Veltroni, say, and Caruso (compare their statements on Israel's counter-attack against Hezbollah), or the difference between Berlusconi (a crook) and Fini (not a crook), though both may be said to be "on the right," are great and sometimes are larger, morally, than the supposed differences in their parties.

But the same is true everywhere. What does an intelligent and decent man (but wildly wrong on Iraq, alas) Senator McCain, or an intelligent and decent man (yet to speak out on Iraq, alas) Tom Tancredo, have to do with the likes of Pat Buchanan? And what does an intelligent and decent man (but wildly wrong on Iraq, alas) Senator Lieberman, have to do with the likes of Representative Jim McDermott, or Jim Moran (both of whom object to the war in Iraq, but for all the dangerously wrong reasons)?

"Left" and "right," "Democrat" and "Republican" -- terms of limited use, and often of limited shelf-life, unless constantly refreshed and mentally updated.

"Bush is either a blithering idiot or a sellout. Or both. So are all the other western governments. I tend to think they are selling us out because they can't ALL be that stupid."-- from a reader

Many of them can be. Others are careerists. Inertia, the party line, the limited possibilities that are on offer, the joke of talking about "thinking outside the box" that emanates from those who have locked themselves inside that very box, and without a clue as to how to unlock it.

And also, mere busyness and hectic vacancy of meetings, and meetings, and meetings, with "colleagues" on "teams" -- so that those who are team-players are kept on, and those who have the dangerous habit of thinking for themselves and possibly also greatly disliking the very idea of "teams" and of bureaucratic scrambling and in-fighting, and the latter category surely includes those who will see things from outside that damn box, see things afresh based on the deliberate acquisition of knowledge of new things. If forced to rely on the assorted three or five page or even one-page executive summaries of things, always prepared by others who, being lowly aides, are unlikely to present information that will not fit the received wisdom or the declared policies of the Very Important Person, in brief authority, for whom those grandly-named Executive Summaries are prepared for all those too busy to think, to busy to apprehend -- well, the whole thing is a nightmare, designed to encourage limited possibilities, and to require the adoption of this or that variant of received opinion.

And what is more, those in charge not only lack knowledge and intelligence of the level required, but lack imagination. They have done without it their whole lives, so why should it be different when they rise, or claw, their ay to the top? Not raised on either history or literature, in sufficient doses, to encourage imagination, not having been raised in an environment where skepticism was continuously encouraged, how could they arrive at their own views or begin to question all the things that need questioning?

And so, for example, dealing with the Sudan, no one seems to have realized that this is a perfect place to take a stand, to shore up Christians in the Sudan and elsewhere in Black Africa, and to emphasize both for non-Muslims and Muslims the Arab persecution and murder of non-Muslim Arabs, as a way of raising the matter of Islam as a vehicle for Arab imperialism, of Islam as the Arab national religion. Can't do it, can't imagine seizing the southern Sudan and Darfur, can't imagine the photographs of those crowds of grateful black Africans surrounding the American soldiers, can't foresee the electrifying effect on Christians, besieged or feeling themselves besieged, in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast and Togo, all the way to Ethiopia and Kenya and Tanzania. Can't imagine, can't begin to imagine, what effect this would have on the sinister forces in the Arab League and Arab states who are secretly backing the government of Sudan to the hilt. And then, if that handful of soldiers and those planes destroy the Sudanese military capacity, and simply announce that they will remain to organize a referendum or perhaps two, in Darfur and the southern Sudan, to see what the people there wish, whether they wish to remain part of Sudan -- who can object? Kofi Annan? Javier Solana? Miguel Moratinos? The Arab League? On what grounds will they object? That the U.N. was rescuing those black Africans? That everything was going swimmingly? That the Arabs of the northern Sudan have a right to murder or starve to death the black Africans of Darfur and of the southern Sudan, and to appropriate, for its own murderous uses, the oil that lies under what is still, for now, but need not be forever, the soil of southern Sudan?

No, they can't think in those terms, any more than they dare to worry about, and make plans to halt, as a national security measure, the growing Muslim presence in Western Europe. Even if they do not quite realize what the idea of the "West" means -- though they prate of it quite enough -- they should be able to understand what might happen if Muslims in Europe were to acquire control over even a small part of the armories of the NATO countries. But do you hear anything about planning for this? A hint about worries over demographic conquest and unhindered campaigns of Da'wa in Europe, or here? Any hint that there is a real, as opposed to a non-existent, policy on energy designed to drive down OPEC revenues that are the "wealth weapon" that is such an important part of the Jihad? Not from Condoleeza Rice. Not from George Bush. Not from all their aides and sous-chefs, cooking up a storm.

Yet they make policy. Yet they presume to instruct us. Yet they presume to rule.