Fun with translation in today's Telegraph:

The pitfalls of translation can cause even top international diplomats to stumble - often much to the amusement of their audience, an insider has revealed.

A new book by Richard Woolcott, who ran Australia's foreign service for four years, recounts the case of an Australian diplomat in France.

The envoy tried to tell his French audience that as he looked back on his career, it was divided in two parts. But his French sparked unintended laughter: "When I look at my backside, I find it is divided into two parts."

Extracts from Mr Woolcott's book, Undiplomatic Activities, have been published in the latest Bulletin magazine, although the book has yet to be formally launched.

Mr Woolcott recalled a speech he gave on a visit to Palembang shortly after he had arrived on a posting in Indonesia.

"Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my wife and myself, I want to say how delighted we are to be in Palembang," he said in English.

The interpreter said something entirely different. "Ladies and gentlemen, on top of my wife, I am delighted to be in Palembang."

According to the book, the former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke left his Japanese audience bewildered when he used the Australian colloquial phrase "I am not here to play funny buggers" to dismiss a trivial question.

"For Japanese interpreters, however, this was a real problem. They went into a huddle to consult on the best way to render 'funny buggers' into Japanese," Mr Woolcott wrote.

The interpreters told him they had then told the audience: "I am not here to play laughing homosexuals with you".

Australia's Labour Party leader Kevin Rudd, now a master of Mandarin, struggled with the language as a young diplomat in 1984 when he interpreted his ambassador's speech on the close relationship between Australia and China.

"Australia and China are enjoying simultaneous orgasms in their relationship," Mr Woolcott quoted Rudd as telling the audience in Mandarin.

But the best interpretations sometimes involved no translation at all, such as the unnamed Asian minister who told a long joke at a banquet in Seoul.

"The Korean interpreter was lost, but did not show it. He uttered a few sentences and the audience laughed and applauded," Mr Woolcott wrote.

After later being complimented on his translating skills, the interpreter confessed to the real reason for the laughter.

"Frankly, minister, I did not understand your joke so I said in Korean that the minister has told his obligatory joke, would you all please laugh heartily and applaud."

What about the other dogs? And even a cat can look at a queen. And the mice -- don't they count?

Anton Chekhov in his stories often displayed a special interest and sympathy for animals. And even when he is concentrating, say, on a man and a woman and the trouble they can get into in Yalta, and then deeper trouble back in Moscow, he allowed a dog with only a walk-on part to share the marquee with the main actress in his most famous story: "The Lady With a Lapdog."

And that little dog may have been much like the little dog who just became, according to the Last Will and Testament of Leona Helmsley,  the beneficiary of a $12 million dollar trust. One hopes that the estate lawyer remembers his Casner, and carefully crafted a Spendthrift Trust, so that the dog in question, who looks as if he, or a not impossible she, is used to the high life, now master-less and presumably calling the shots, doesn't overdo it  at Harry Winston or Van Cleef & Arpel and go wild on diamond collars that she, or a not impossible he, really doesn't need, nor does that dog having its day and excellent adventure necessary have to imitate the worst practices of human so-called owners of dogs --see "Richistan" for more --  and have Kobe beef flown in every even day from the best butcher shop in Tokyo, and special biscuits flown in every odd day from Fauchon's in Paris. And those all-platinum leashes may impress some humans, but dogs find them really quite impractical.  

Never mind the humans who were not remembered in Helmsley's will, much less in her non-existent orisons. What about the other animals? The same Chekhov, that dog-lover, a descendant of whose own dachshund  came to be owned by a family bearing  another notable name in Russian literature, the same gentle, all-seeing all-knowing Anton Pavlich who wrote "Dama s sobachkoj" also wrote, many will remember,  the story "Gore" ( in English "Trouble"). And in "Trouble" there is a line that haunts:  "The tears of the mouse come back to the cat." Yes, the tears of the mouse. And then the tears of the cat.

What about that mouse? What about that cat?

I to my perils
  Of cheat and charmer
  Came clad in armour
    By stars benign.
Hope lies to mortals
  And most believe her
  But man's deceiver
    Was never mine.

The thoughts of others
  Were light and fleeting,
  Of lovers' meeting
    Or luck or fame.
Mine were of Trouble,
  And mine were steady,
  So I was ready
    When Trouble came.

                    After -- well after -- A. E. Housman

Leona Helmsley became known as "The Queen of Mean" after details of how she treated her employees were revealed during her trial for income tax evasion. Now comes the news that her dog was bequeathed more from her will than her grandchildren were. 

WaPo...Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court.

She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, and two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer. If those two grandchildren don't visit their father's grave site at least once a year, she wrote, they will lose half of the $10 million she left for each of them.

Helmsley left nothing to two of Jay Panzirer's other children _ Craig and Meegan Panzirer _ for "reasons that are known to them," she wrote...

She ordered that cash from sales of the Helmsley's residences and belongings, reported to be worth billions, be sold and that the money be given to the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust...

From the Jerusalem Post (hat tip: JW):

The editor of an Arabic daily newspaper published in London said in an interview on Lebanese television that he would dance in Trafalgar Square if Iranian missiles hit Israel.

Talking about Iran's nuclear capability on ANB Lebanese television on June 27, Abd Al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper, said, "If the Iranian missiles strike Israel, by Allah, I will go to Trafalgar Square and dance with delight."...

"descendant...in spirit.…Marquise de....Vicomte de..."
-- from a reader

Certainly not. In the first place, because powdered wigs would make me sneeze. In the second place, because I've never been able to get the hang of the passé simple. In the third place, because I would look silly in a redingote, even a redingote en (Jean-David) levite or, were I a Madame la Marquise rather than a Monsieur le Vicomte, would look comical and clumsy as I tried to affix a mouche to my cheek. And in the fourth place, because were I even "in spirit" such a descendant I would certainly not choose to be the kind of Frenchman who could flaunt a last name à particule. Google “I Am An American Day” and “Hugh Fitzgerald” for further proof.

As for ladri di biciclette, some of those sympathetic and desperate ladri are able to peddle those bicycles right up into, and then across, a sky backlit by the moon, as in that scene in “Miracolo a Milano” — a scene, incidentally, shamelessly copied, without attribution, in “E.T.”

As for the other losses you refer to, losses that go far beyond bicycles built for one or two, that’s another and more painful story. Woe is me, woe is you, woe are all God’s chillun-- if they only knew.

Some of those weapons missing in action in Iraq have been found in Turkey. I wonder how many times a recruit could show up and tell the Americans, "I lost my AK-47, my helmet, my pistol and all my body armor again last night"?

New Duranty: WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — Weapons that were originally given to Iraqi security forces by the American military have been recovered over the past year by the authorities in Turkey after being used in violent crimes in that country, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.

The discovery that serial numbers on pistols and other weapons recovered in Turkey matched those distributed to Iraqi police units has prompted growing concern by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that controls on weapons being provided to Iraqis are inadequate. It was also a factor in the decision to dispatch the department’s inspector general to Iraq next week to investigate the problem, the officials said.

Pentagon officials said they did not yet have evidence that Iraqi security forces or Kurdish officials were selling or giving the weapons to Kurdish separatists, as Turkish officials have contended.

It was possible, they said, that the weapons had been stolen or lost during firefights and smuggled into Turkey after being sold in Iraq’s extensive black market for firearms. Officials gave widely varied estimates — from dozens to hundreds — of how many American-supplied weapons had been found in Turkey.

Over the past year, inquiries by federal oversight agencies have found serious discrepancies in military records of where thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces actually ended up.

But that's not all...

The disclosure of the weapons in Turkey, part of those investigations, came on the same day that the Army announced moves aimed at addressing a widening scandal that has generated 76 criminal investigations involving contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Twenty civilians and military personnel have been charged in federal court as a result of the inquiries...

The Washington Post has obtained a draft copy of the General Accountability Office report to Congress due to be delivered next week:

...The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

The draft provides a stark assessment of the tactical effects of the current U.S.-led counteroffensive to secure Baghdad. "While the Baghdad security plan was intended to reduce sectarian violence, U.S. agencies differ on whether such violence has been reduced," it states. While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces, it notes, the number of attacks against Iraqi civilians remains unchanged. It also finds that "the capabilities of Iraqi security forces have not improved."

"Overall," the report concludes, "key legislation has not been passed, violence remains high, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion in reconstruction funds," as promised. While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments "would be more useful" if they backed up their judgments with more details and "provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies."

A GAO spokesman declined to comment on the report before it is released. The 69-page draft, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is still undergoing review at the Defense Department, which may ask that parts of it be classified or request changes in its conclusions. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, normally submits its draft reports to relevant agencies for comment but makes its own final judgments. The office has published more than 100 assessments of various aspects of the U.S. effort in Iraq since May 2003.

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version -- as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month's National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq....

China seems to be embracing the worst aspects of capitalism while retaining many features of totalitarianism. From The Telegraph:

Cartoon police officers are to appear in "pop-up" warnings on the internet every half hour to warn Chinese users that they must steer clear of unapproved websites.

As the country prepares for its landmark five-yearly Communist Party Congress in October, human rights groups said the authorities are exerting even greater pressure on freedom of speech.

Officials stress that "Jing" and "Cha", its two "internet cops" named after the two characters that make up the Chinese word for "police", are on the look out for criminal activity. "They will be on the watch for websites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud," an official told the China Daily newspaper. "Secession" refers to support for an independent Tibet or Taiwan.

A second official said it was important to wipe out information that "disrupts social stability", a catch-all phrase often used to refer to emails, bulletin boards and blogs that challenge the political status quo.

One unusual aspect of Chinese censorship is that as it has become more systematic in recent years, it has also become more open, with less sensitive decisions published and even argued over in newspapers.

Jing and Cha don't look all that scary. Or all that Chinese. They remind me of some cartoon characters I have seen before, but I can't think which ones. Fred from the Home Pride adverts?

Perhaps they should try this in Muslim countries, with a muttawa popping up when you try to read, say, The Religious Policeman. (Can you say " muttawa", or does it have to be "one of the muttawa"? I think I'll settle for "muttawawallah".)

Better stop now. A kartoon Ken has popped up in the corner of my screen to tell me this website is "Islamophobic". Wait a minute, though ... a cartoon Boris Johnson - or is that a photograph?- has just bemerded him with a witty apophthegm.

It [his French] sparked “unintended laughter.” And no wonder. Even schoolchildren in France know that when something is divided, it must necessarily be divided, both en principe and also as a matter of principle,  just as Gaul itself,  by Caesarian sections, was once divided, in partes tres.

Someone from the Embassy staff should have told him.

MEMRI: Interviewer: "Why are the Amazigh [Berber people] - or some of them, let's not generalize - launching an Amazigh-Israeli friendship association?"

Yahya Abu Zakariya, Algerian writer: "Fuad, let me make it clear that, in principle, the Amazigh, throughout the history of the Maghreb, fought off all the colonialist attacks. They stood up to the Vandals, the Romans, and the French who came to the Arab Maghreb. Even before the French, they stood up to the Spaniards. They were the epitome of steadfastness, resistance, and confrontation. Moreover, they did a great service to Islamic civilization, and contributed to it to the greatest degree. The fact that such calls are emerging from the Arab Maghreb - the calls for rapprochement with the Zionist entity, which as the entire world knows, has penetrated our territory, and taken away our security... These calls are, obviously, dubious."

[...]

"There has been a transformation among certain groups, which are saying that the Arab Maghreb has nothing to do with the Arab world, that there are no bridges connecting this region of North Africa with the Arab world, and that relations with the Zionist entity must be rebuilt. Unfortunately, such initiatives receive official blessing." [...]

"The past is over. Let's learn from it and move on. That's the reason I am fighting Islam."-- from the same reader as below

1) The past is never "over." It is simply past or as a famous wit once wrote even more forcefully and truthfully "it is not even past." But one has to have a good grasp of what that past actually was, and what it means, especially if that "past" was not 3000 years ago, or 800 years ago, but within living memory and the lives of people still alive.

2) Yes, let's learn "from it [that past]." Agreed. But how can we "learn from it" if we do not study it, and study it, and not engage in a refusal to do so because it might be vaguely unpleasant for us, or tell us things we have chosen to not think about too deeply, as for example the case of Kurt Waldheim, and the defensive reaction to it, of many Austrians, so clearly demonstrated. The spectacle did not impress -- and further attempts now by some to think that they can depict Waldheim as some kind of victim instead of as a repeated and willing participant in mass-murder and every sort of atrocity, and who wish us to take at face value, after his lying about his service, and then his exploitation of the attacks on him, in order to win votes when running for President, by appealing to the worst conceivable sentiments in Austria, which is not exactly a demonstration of "repentance." As for dropping a ready tear for Waldheim, as he cashed those fat U.N. checks on top of his pension as a former Austrian diplomat and Austrian president, because he could no longer swan about the White House or Davos, though he was perfectly welcome in Austria and all kinds of places -- I don't call that "ostracism."

I'm unclear as to your statement "That's why I am fighting Islam." Why? Are you fighting it because it is doubly-totalitarian, in that it wishes to impose itself on the minds and in the lives of its adherents as a system of Total Regulation, to which it is not theirs to reason why but merely to obey? Is it because Islam encourages the habit of mental submission, and punishes free and skeptical inquiry, and thereby stunts mental growth? Is it because Islam severely limits the possibilities for artistic expression, banning all statuary, and all depictions of living creatures (hence, almost all of Western painting would be banned, or destroyed, under Islam), and music as well (in the strictest interpretation)? Is it because Islam divides the world in two, between Believer and Infidel, and insists that a permanent state of war must exist between the two, and that war can be conducted by Muslims, and it is their duty to conduct it, in order to remove any obstacles to the spread of Islam anywhere in the world (should those Infidels put up any obstacles, or already have in place legal and political institutions that flatly contradict the letter and the spirit of Islam), because the duty of Jihad is central, not tangential, and participation may sometimes be required of individuals, but is always required of the community as a whole, the umma al-islamiyya?

Islam does indeed stunt moral and mental growth. But it is not the only thing that stunts the moral sense. I would like to understand why you think forgetting about "the past" of Nazi war criminals is a good thing, and why we "must get over it," and why Waldheim saving you when you were apparently a hostage of Saddam Hussein (why were you there? What brought you to Kuwait, or was it Iraq?) entitles him to evade or avoid the moral judgment of others, of Posterity, of History? It strikes me as presumptuous for you to offer your own personal connection to Waldheim as a reason why all of us should join you in being so forgiving. We are talking, remember, about mass murder, not shoplifting.

Should I, if the government of Turkey invites me on an all-expenses paid trip, and woos me in every possible way (even mails me, after the fact, a very large rug which I only discover at my house when I return home), let “the past” about this pesky Armenian genocide business simply rest? Should I, because I have no personal connection to any of the mass-murders of the past century, simply forget about all of them, and let the past be the past. Don’t you think the Turks should forthrightly recognize that Armenian genocide, and aren’t you impressed with those Turks whom you meet personally who are willing to do so? And similarly, wouldn’t it be sensible, proper, just, to expect that Austrians might not be more defensive about Waldheim (“as an Austrian”) but make it a point of honor to investigate thoroughly not only Waldheim, but many others, and own up to all of it, and denounce it, and make a point of teaching young Austrians all about those years, and those many waldheims. I allow myself to believe that, upon much greater reflection, your answer – in the privacy of your own soul – will be Yes.

'He is one of those Austrians who drove the late Thomas Bernhard to maddened distraction, the kind who claim that Austrians were the 'first victims' of Hitler (forgetting those cheering crowds, that delight at Anschluss)."  --quoting this post

"Those Austrians" are only echoing the statement issued by the foreign ministers of the US, UK, and USSR at the Moscow Conference of 1943, which referred to Austria as "the first free country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression."

What was ironic about this statement is that the Austrians who were most opposed to the Anschluss were the pro-Habsburg monarchists and the supporters of Dolfuss and Schussnigg [sic], all of whom the Allies were determined to exclude from any signifcant political role in postwar Austria.
--from a reader

This reader has proven himself to be a constant, stout, and very quick defender of those he thinks I much malign, including the Sudeten Germans. He hates any mention of the Benes Decree, and keeps trying to find ways to call it into question, and also tries to make it appear that such mention must necessarily constitute a thoroughgoing endorsement by me. But this is nonsense. The Benes Decree has been adduced as an example of the way in which not merely such regimes as those of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Morocco, Algeria, and Libya, have expelled the nationals, but so too has a modern, advanced, tolerant, Western state, Czechoslovakia, when its tolerant and civilized leaders, Jan Masaryk and Eduard Benes, and many other Czechs, drew from the Czech experience just before and during World War II with the Sudeten Germans living inside Czechoslovakia, who for the most part, under their leader Henlein, willingly allowed themselves to be used by Hitler to promote his own war aims and demands on Czechoslovakia, and then after Czechoslovakia was occupied by German troops, those Sudeten Germs received the same rations as German soldiers, which was much better than what the Czechs and Slovaks received, and otherwise received special treatment (as did Volksdeutsche elsewhere, as in Poland), and many collaborated with their fellow ethnic Germans. The Benes Decree cannot be ignored for it raises an issue that needs to be pondered: what has a universally-recognized tolerant Western regime felt necessary in the recent past to do, by way of enlarging the historical consciousness and understanding of those who may not know enough even about that recent past). This reader also appears to have a penchant for putting in quick, darting remarks designed to explain away Muslim behavior, or to justify it on a Tu-Quoque basis, with the “Tu”in the Tu-Quoque ordinarily being, for him, the endlessly invidious state of Israel, that Mighty Empire that doth bestride the world like a colossus.

I have looked over all of his past postings, and have noticed that his sympathies run deep, but also very narrow. Whatever else he is here for, he is not here to learn about Islam, or contribute to the discussion about ways to handle the world-wide menace of Jihad. And now, this reader takes issue with my comments on Austria as phonily thinking of itself, presenting itself, as the “first victim of Hitler.” He adduces as proof that Austria was indeed the “first victim of Hitler” a statement that was apparently put into some communiqué issued by something he calls the Moscow Conference in 1943 (Yalta?), a conference held in the middle of World War II. Now it is obvious what happened. The Allies, in the middle of the war, put in some remark designed to appeal to some Austrians in the hope that they might be broken off from the alliance with Germany. It was merely a single statement, no more, and who at that point cared if it was an obvious falsehood if it might cause some Austrian soldiers to defect, and to cause greater disaffection with following Germany’s lead among Austria’s civilians.

But one has only to read the best accounts of the best historians – start with William L. Shirer -- about the Austrians in 1938, to understand just how enthusiastic so many of them were about the Anschluss; anyone who has seen newsreels of that period has seen those streets lined with those eager faces on so many screaming, hysterical, often heil-hitlering crowds; anyone who has studied World War II knows that the Austrians, on a per capita basis, contributed even more concentration camp guards than did the Germans. And everyone knows -- every decent historian has noted it -- that the Austrians were quick, after the war, to pretend to have been those "first victims" of Hitler, innocent, gemutlich, “tiny” – only ten million people -- Austria, and the Americans, pushing at that point the British and French (remember that Allied troops, along with Soviet ones, remained in Occupied Austria long after the war), were happy in those Dulles-brother days to pretend that they actually believed this, for it made going easy on the Austrians that much easier to sell at home. No different from the quick re-writing of the past of Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolf and other Peenemunde alumni, with Rudolf at least being accused much later of being a war criminal and having to leave the U.S., while von Braun had been made so much of that he was immunized by his own fame. But those days are over; implacable History remains, and the Truth can now be told.

The reader refers to the Hapsburgs and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and tells us, in the un-misleading second part of his post, that the Old Conservatives of that past -- you can see their old-fashioned demeanors, their frac-tails, and their lorgnettes, and the stout women who all look like Margaret Dumont, in the photographs taken by Erich Salomon and collected in his “Portrait of an Age,” where fixed in amber one views the diplomatic salons and interminable meetings of the political class, especially in Germany and Austria (but also in Paris and London), during the entre-deux-guerres period, in that crazed Der-Mann-Ohne-Eigenschaften (Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities”) world. There was a lot to be said for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, no doubt, and its breakup after World War I may have contributed to the monstrousness that followed. But not every “conservative” was stoutly anti-Hitler; some, on the right, simply shifted to the far-right. However, Chancellor Dollfuss was assassinated by Hitler for being Jewish (though author of an anti-Semitic tract himself) and being resistant to Hitler’s aims, and Kurt Schuschnigg – (not “Schussnigg” as in the post above to which I am replying) – resisted Hitler too, and spent part of the war in Sachsenhausen, being tortured by the Nazis.

The best of the “conservative” opposition to Hitler was to be found not only in Austria but in Germany. “Diary of a Man in Despair” by Count Friedrich Reck-Maleckzewen (murdered in 1945 at Dachau), for example, every page dripping with contempt for Hitler and the rabble, or the people who made themselves into a rabble in order to fit in and to follow him, is unforgettable. And then there are all those German-speaking exiles who arrived on these safe shores, and were rescued, and who included Joseph Schumpeter at the Center for Entrepreneurial History at Harvard (22 Mass. Ave., a rickety old structure, long torn down, with fireplaces in every office-suite, and wooden floors that slanted), and Friedrich von Hayek, and a thousand others. Real conservatives, yes, and therefore, of course, implacable enemies of Hitler and his hysterical followers, with their followers’ slave mentality.

The whole point of the article below was to make clear that while Infidels must make common cause, there are limits. And when someone such as Jorg Haider happens to be promoting the right thing, what will happen next is obvious: the Muslim lobby, and those non-Muslims who dangerously defend and promote them, will point to the support given to this measure by Jorg Haider to dismiss not only this measure, but other such measures that might, that indeed should be, supported by all sensible Infidels. It’s a danger, it’s a way for such groups as CAIR to wrap themselves in a moral mantle that they have no business putting on. It is therefore important for those who recognize Islam as a Total System (just as Nazism was a Total System), not make the mistake of embracing absolutely everyone who appears to have the right view of Islam, but is a defender, if not a believer in, one of the other unacceptable Total Systems, or mental totalitarianisms, of this unappetizing age.

Islam respects women. Islam prevents women from being made into mere sex objects. Islam provides for the "portable seclusion" of the burqah. In Islam there is no decadence, no exploitation, as there is in the cruel and intolerable West. If anything at all is ever to be found inhumane in the treatment or status of women in Muslim societies, even if those societies are suffused with Islam and its attitudes, that has nothing to do with Islam. See Shirin Ebadi. See Fatima Mernissi. See Leila Ahmad. See Leila Abu-Lughod. No, whatever bad things happen to women within Muslim societies has nothing to do with Islam but only with "cultural practices" that -- let us all repeat again -- have n-o-t-h-i-n-g to do with Islam.

Got that?

Muslim "feminists" -- the sometimes sensible-sounding ones (Fatima Mernissi, less often Leila Ahmad) and the almost-never-sensible-ones (Abu-Lughod)-- have changed a good deal over the years. Now they are quick to sense that Islam is being implicated in the mistreatment by Muslim men, in Muslim countries, of Muslim women. This is something they don't like, and there is a quick circling of the wagons to make sure that in no case is Islam itself to be blamed. The fact that a manual of surgery on the subject of partial or full clitoridectomies is not appended to the Qur'an should fool no one. The text of Qur'an, the practices of the Sunnah (derived largely from Hadith and Sira) inculcate a view of women and of their distinct differences from, and inferiority to men, which naturally gives men the right to interfere and to cut-and-paste, with the emphasis here on cutting, in order to create a More Perfect Woman, less menacing in her dangerous sexuality.

That is also why she, that creature, must be covered up -- for men are poor, weak, forked things, and need to be protected from those wiles and endless guiles and come-hitherings of women. They therefore must be covered up for the same reason that they must be cut, here and there, to make sure that their centers of pleasure are removed. Otherwise there is no telling what they might do to entice men, or to drag the honor of their families into the dust.

Does the general message of Islam, do the attitudes toward women that naturally flow from familiarity with, and deep belief in, the texts of Islam, do anything to encourage the practice of what is clumsily called Female Genital Mutilation? Or is there no relation between the two, as Fatima Mernissi et al. would smilingly, plausibly, sweetly (with the hysteria just underneath, ready to explode) have you believe?

What do you believe?

Contrary to what Fatima Mernissi, Leila Ahmed, Leila Abu-Lughod, Diana Eck, and Shirin Ebadi, say about Female Genital Mutilation and the mistreatment of women in general, it would be far truer to say that those Muslim peoples and polities most willing to overlook the tenets and attitudes of Islam are those where women have the best chance at something like a semi-decent life. It is precisely to the extent that a country observes the Shari'a, or tries to, that determines the level of hideousness of the treatment of local Muslim women.

Forget, everyone, what Mernissi and Ebadi and Ahmed and assorted running dogs of Islam -- Karen Armstrong comes to mind -- say about Islam and "feminism" or "Feminism and Islam." Read Hirsi Ali. Read Azam Kamguian and those who blog at the Homa Darabi website (start with the scathing reviews of Shirin Ebadi). Forget the purveyors of nonsense (Purveyors of Nonsense To His Majesty King Abdullah, Hassan, Hussein, Muhammad, whatever you want, since round about 1985, when the whole ridiculous "Islam and Feminism" thing got started).

It would help if every young female marching off to "help the people" in Iraq or Afghanistan were to first, seriously, sit down and read carefully both the articles by such people as Azam Kamguian on Islam and women, and then as well to read the study of Islam and its incompatibility with human rights written by Reza Afshari. And see, in particular, Reza Afshari's unanswerable dissection of the smiling dishonesty of that phony "feminist" Fatima Mernissi, who started out as a self-proclaimed defender of women's rights, and rather quickly, seeing what this might do to the image of Islam, became a sudden Defender of the Faith, with a highly imaginative version of that Faith and its supposed history of "reform."

From Life Style Extra.
The leaders of a mosque at the centre of a TV row over extremist preachers wanted to cover up allegations a teacher hit a child, a tribunal heard today.
The new regime at Croydon Mosque and Islamic Centre in south London refused to listen when a respected teacher said the boy had complained that a deputy Imam had assaulted him and ripped his clothes, the hearing was told.
The allegation came during an employment tribunal against the Mosque, recently featured in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary which sparked controversy with footage of firebrand preachers delivering inflammatory speeches.
Rhuksana Asgar, who taught at the Islamic Centre for nine years, claims she was victimised and sacked during a purge of British-born staff after a new Imam and his family took over the running of the mosque.
Today at Croydon Employment Tribunal, Mrs Asgar's father Muhammad Asgar, who is also a teacher at the Mosque, said things changed for the worse after South African Imam Ashraf Hansrot, his wife Mehzbeen and his sister Asma Amin took over.
Mr Asgar, 52, said: "A child told me a new male teacher, a deputy Imam, had hit him and ripped his shirt open. I went to tell Mr Tanveer but he said 'I don't want to know'. He didn't want any bother.  The previous general secretary was the one we would go to if we had a problem but Mr Tanveer didn't want to listen at all. He said: 'I don't want so many chiefs, only one chief.'"
Mr Asgar, who has taught at the mosque for thirteen years, told the tribunal: "I think my daughter was treated unfairly because she is British, and that's why they wanted to get rid of her.  I feared I would lose my job as well.  Since the new Imam and his family arrived in 2005 there have been a lot of staff dismissals and changes which could have been handled a lot better. The mosque could do a lot more to improve the education department.  Now there is hardly any communication between the teachers and principals. We are kept in the dark.  They don't talk to you, only if you speak Gujarati. Otherwise they don't want anything to do with you.  Imam Ashraf would often talk to the teachers in Gujarati in front of me so I wouldn't understand.  I'm the longest serving teacher at the school and I feel very upset that I'm treated differently now."
The tribunal also heard Mrs Asgar's brother Saj Aslam was assaulted when he accompanied his sister to a disciplinary hearing a few days after she was suspended.

At the Weekly Standard Kim Kagan's account demonstrates in detail that Iran's war against the U.S. in Iraq goes back some five years. Devastating.

"I usually agree with you. However, as an Austrian, I have to disagree with you. Waldheim was an elected President, a fact that the US has consistently chosen to ignore. It has also chosen to ignore numerous reports by historians about Waldheim's role in the Nazi era. He was not a thug. I am not a historian, far from an expert, but please: the man is dead, he repented, he asked for forgiveness. He never got over his being ostracized. He was a good man. I know, because he saved my life in August 1990 (remember the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait? I was there.)How many had the guts to do that in the wake of worldwide criticism? How many followed his example?"-- from a reader referring to this post

You claim that "as an Austrian" you have to disagree with me. Oh no you don't. "As an Austrian" you are perfectly free to be ashamed, as a number of intelligent and educated Austrians I know are ashamed, of the way in which Kurt Waldheim managed to escape punishment for his wartime crimes and complicities, and rise high first in the Austrian diplomatic corps, and the all the way to the top of the U.N. You are perfectly free to choose what in Austrian history you wish to defend and what you wish to deplore.

You depict Waldheim as a victim, someone who "never got over being ostracized." What in god's name are you talking about? Half of Austria rallied around him when the stories about his wartime activities in the Balkans, piece by dreadful piece, came to light in the late summer and early fall of 1986. Many people in Austria deeply resented these attacks, and not a few engaged in antisemitic allusions, the usual "the Jews must be behind this" as if it were a) inconceivable that Waldheim might indeed have been covering up his wartime career and that b) non-Jews too might have a stake in finding the truth out, and be perfectly willing to express their disgust as well -- for like all murders the Nazi murders are not to be deplored only by those most immediately affected, the descendants or relatives of those who were looted, tortured, killed in a thousand fiendish ways.

You say that Waldheim "saved your life" while you were in Kuwait? Did he stop a bullet? Push you away from a speeding tank? Or did he change your orders in Kuwait, so that you were not sent into Iraq during the Gulf War? One would like to know more about how Waldheim saved your life.

But in any case, so what? Does that make up for his war-criminal activities, his being in Salonika at the time of the great Aktion, when all the Jews (Salonika was heavily Jewish), were rounded up, and forced to stand for hours motionless under the Salonika sun, some of them collapsing, some dying, while German soldiers (and even the wives of those soldiers) jeered them? Kurt Waldheim was there. He was there, and he won a medal, during "Operation Kozara," which was a messy affair in which tens of thousands of civilians were deliberately, not accidentally, killed by the Nazi (German and Austrian) troops. Toward the end of the war, he was the Intelligence Officer in Unit I-C, and in up to his neck in the planning of atrocities. In 1947 a fellow officer in that unit, one Johan Mayer, testified about what Waldheim had done. But in 1947, there were tens, even hundreds of thousands of such cases, and Waldheim was nothing special. Later, it appears that Tito found out about Waldheim's war record, and may even have used that information as blackmail to modify Waldheim's behavior both in the Austrian diplomatic corps and at the U.N. (Tito sometimes entertained Waldheim at his retreat on the island of Brioni). You write that you are not a "historian" but if you wish to make an informed judgment, rather than offer something based either on apparent group loyalty ("as an Austrian" -- as if many Austrians were not perfectly, serenely capable of denouncing, rather than defending, Waldheim) or on sentimental gratitude ("he saved my life") then you have a duty to fully inform yourself about exactly what Waldheim did -- he was no run-of-the-mill Wehrmacht conscript -- about exactly where he was, when, and what medals he received, and what duties he performed. I don't think you will continue to defend him after that.

And as to that "he saved my life" gratitude. Imagine that you are visiting Los Angeles, and about to cross the street, but being unfamiliar with the United States, you start out too soon, and a car is just about to hit you, when suddenly the same dark-skinned man with the most open and friendliest of faces, who had been standing near you on the curb, rushes out -- he's a very fast runner -- and athletically scoops you up and manages to carry you right to safety. You'd be grateful to him for having saved your life." Would you also forgive him, and let bygones be bygones, when you discover that your samaritan-saver who had risked his life to save yours (unlike Waldheim, whom I presume did not personally risk his own life to save yours in Kuwait) is named O. J. Simpson?

I find morally intolerable the idea that if Nazi war criminals live long enough, or rise high enough, or as in Waldheim's case both live long enough and rise high enough, we should forgive them. And besides, you tell me that he repented. Did he? Did he ever make an admission as to his guilt? Remember -- or perhaps you don't -- how he kept claiming that he had been home in Vienna, taking exams, or working on his doctorate, in order to maintain that he was not at the site of various atrocities when all the evidence makes clear that he was, and that he was lying for exactly that reason -- lying not long ago, but in 1986, when the story first broke, and continuing to lie.

You write that "the man is dead." So what? Should we rewrite his life because "the man is dead"? If so, since we will all die, we all deserve to have our lives re-written, or nothing bad said about us after our death.

And then you insist "he repented." Did he? What did he "repent" of? I'd like to see his public "repentance." I'd like to see what he admitted to having taken part in, or did he merely issue some kind of vague covering-all-bases "I'm sorry" that meant nothing, after so many years of lying, and in his run for the presidency of Austria, exploiting the pre-existing defensiveness (not unmixed, among some, with antisemitism and a feeling that "we Austrians have suffered enough" that leaves me, and hundreds of millions of others if they thought about it, cold) of Austrians rallying around them, no matter what antisemitic or other unpleasant coloration such a defensiveness took on, with that "we Austrians have suffered enough" attitude that so maddened Thomas Bernhard, and so maddens any morally sensitive Austrian, not to mention Germans, and other non-Austrians, today, and always will, and always should. If he "asked for forgiveness" I was unaware of it, but asking for forgiveness means nothing if he does not specify exactly those acts for which he is requesting "forgiveness." As for being "ostracized" -- he made out quite well, didn't he, really, being elected, even after this scandal, to the Presidency of Austria. Some ostracism. And then he lived very comfortably on that fat U.N. pension given to former Secretaries-General by the U.N. (and therefore paid, in great part, by American taxpayers). If you mean he wasn't quite so welcome to swan around the world, and visit the corridors of power, if you mean he wasn't invited to Davos -- well, yes, in that sense he was "ostracized" just like almost all the rest of humanity. But he had a gay old time at the Schonbrunn Palace, didn't he, long after every detail about his war record was available for public inspection.

And his crimes were of a different level altogether, than those of the "O. J. Simpson" used in my hypothetical above. O.J. Simpson, after all, unpleasant as he is, merely committed a frenzied and unpremeditated crime of passion, resulting in the deaths of exactly two people. Waldheim's crimes were committed over several years, during his active, be-medalled, and apparently enthusiastic participation in, not one but a series of mass-murdering (of Jews, of Serbian civilians) atrocities, in Greece and in the former Yugoslavia. And it is not an excuse to say that many people got away with it, many people were not punished. We know that. History knows that. It excuses nothing.

Is Bush "with us or with them"? That is, is he with the forces of relative enlightenment, which in Turkey means Kemalist constraints on Islam, and the secularists, and the Turkish Army that must defend that secularism by, at times, ignoring the retrograde results of head-counting in a Muslim country, and will he give signs of not objecting to, in any way, whatever action that army decides to take (and one worries about the steady Islamic infiltration, at the lower levels, that no doubt has been relentlessly going on)?

Or will he, because of Tarbaby Iraq and the sentimental cause in Tarbaby Iraq of "bringing freedom" and "democracy" (that purple-thumbed affair, in which the Shi'a, knowing the numbers, participated so avidly, and the Sunnis, knowing the numbers, stayed away from so glumly) to "ordinary moms and dads," feel that for consistency's sake (consistency from a man who invokes any argument and pseudo-analogy he can to defend to the end -- he will never understand --the fiasco of Tarbaby Iraq -- from "how long it took" to raise up Occupied Germany and Occupied Japan, to the Marshall Plan, to the dangers of this one group ("Al Qaeda") that is apparently set to take over all of Iraq the moment we leave, or if they aren't quite set to do it, then their mortal enemies the Shi'a are set to do it, or if neither is set to do it, then "chaos" and "catastrophe" (whose chaos? whose catastrophe?) will ensue if we listen to the cut-and-runners, and we can't have that, can't have that chaos, that catastrophe, that "instability" and fighting that might -- quelle horreur! -- involve Iraq's neighbors, can we, because....well, just because. And now it's Vietnam.

Get a grip. Support the Turkish Army in Turkey. Support the Turkish Army, for that matter, if it wants to take a bite out of crime and invade or seize part of Syria, for any damn reason it wants (Kurdistan is another matter, and can be discussed separately).

But is Bush capable of getting a grip on anything? On the Iraq fiasco, on the collapsing bridges, on the climate-threatened cities and towns, on the hollowed-out manufacturing, with those millions of human sacrifices made on various altars by the High Priests of Globalization (including those of the previous administration who were so eager to get with the program), or on a complete sentence, uttered only with the utmost difficulty by the man who presumes to instruct and protect us, and has spent $880 billion dollars in Iraq because he failed to understand Islam, and failed to find out a thing of significance about Iraq?

So what are the chances he and Rice and the others will semaphore their displeasure with any move by the Turkish Army? They don't want any "obvious" incoherence in their policies, unaware of, or oblivious to the fact that, their policies are completely, hopelessly, shamelessly incoherent, when it comes to the menace of Islam, already.

Some mixed metaphors and insults from Richard Morrison in The Times:

[C]onsider mankind’s capacity for giving hackneyed phrases a graphic new twist. One of Britain’s most distinguished opera impresarios (no prizes for guessing which one) once told me that he had decided to “grasp the nettle firmly by the throat” and build a new theatre on his country estate. Of course, such delightful metaphorical soufflés are often dismissed as mere slips of the tongue. Rees quotes a lady who was fond of declaring that “we’ll cross that bridge when we’ve burnt it”. But as Freud said, there are no true “accidents” in life. Subconsciously, that lady liked to advocate courses of action so bold that she scarcely wanted to admit her recklessness to herself. Only her mashing together of two different metaphors gave her away.

To judge from Rees’s book, our brains are frequently at their most fertile when devising insults. He cites one that will be familiar in many households — “My wife’s upstairs, changing her mind” — and, from the other side of the sexist divide, Mrs Thatcher’s quintessential “The cocks may crow but it’s the hen that lays the eggs”. (Some hen, some eggs — as one of her distinguished predecessors might have quipped.)

What’s amazing, though, is the sheer variety of ways in which we can imply that someone is a bit challenged in the grey-cells department. Rees quotes “thick as two short planks” (and makes a stab at explaining why the planks, bafflingly, have to be short). He also cites “daft as a brush” and its delightful Norfolk variant: “He don’t go no further than Thursday” (you have to do it in a rustic accent for the full effect).

I love mangetout, but I couldn't eat a whole one. If I were American, I couldn't make that joke because apparently the American for mangetout is "snow peas". I know it rains cats and dogs sometimes, but really.

That was the only term in this list that I didn't understand. However, I imagine that this wouldn't work too well the other way round. Through television and films the British get to be familiar with American English, but the reverse may not be true, or not as true. Here's a quick test for Americans, to which answers may be found by following the link.

Articulated lorry
Bum bag
Cling film
Drawing pin
Full board
Hundreds and thousands
Indicator
Noughts and crosses
Off-licence
Pants
Pillock
Plonker
Poste restante
Recorded delivery
Roundabout
Vest
Wind-up merchant
Zebra crossing

A reader comments:

There's a story, probably apocryphal, of a Beatles tour around London. At one point the guide said, "And here is where George Harrison once had a flat" And several of the Americans promptly started taking photographs of the pavement/sidewalk (which isn't even in your list!)

We visited this church, St Mary's Burnham Deepdale in Norfolk on the strength of the round tower - quite rare only about 200 left and almost all in east Anglia.  It used to be thought that round towers were all Saxon and were made because it is difficult to make square towers of flint. When the Normans brought their architecture and good stone then towers were built square. Modern research shows that square towers could be built just as well in flint and that some round towers have Norman features.  It is more likely that the round towers were favoured as a local style because the east coast maintained links and attitudes with northern Germany and Scandinavia despite southern England's enforced relationship with Normandy and France.

What I was unaware of, until we stepped inside was the beautiful carved font. One side is carved with foliage, the other three sides are a calendar of the agricultural year. Clockwise, in January and February the man warms his feet and drinks beer, through spring and summer he digs sows, hoes and prunes. 

In Autumn he harvests and reaps, in October he makes wine, in November he kills the pig and in December  four men sit down to feast, at Christmas I presume.

There is some beautiful old glass as well.

Photographs by Mustrum Ridcully

I really must take issue with this taxonomy of foreigners, from Orwell's essay, quoted by John Derbyshire:

Frenchman: Excitable. Wears beard, gesticulates wildly.
Spaniard, Mexican, etc.: Sinister, treacherous.
Arab, Afghan, etc.: Sinister, treacherous.
Chinese: Sinister, treacherous. Wears pigtail.
Italian: Excitable. Grinds barrel-organ or carries stiletto.
Swede, Dane, etc.: Kind-hearted, stupid.
Negro: Comic, very faithful.

This is far, far too kind to the French. It leaves out the garlic, the unfunny mimes, the terrible pop music, the philosophy, the onions, the silly accents. It also leaves out the excessive concern with make-up, hair and the "right" handbag - and that's just the men.

Far from being criminal, laughing at foreigners is alive and well in the UK. Foreigners, including Americans, but especially the French were put on this earth for the amusement of the English. It isn't that we want to laugh at them. On the contrary, we embrace the EU goal of unity in diversity. The problem is that foreigners will just keep on being so bloody ridiculous. Americans too, but especially the French.

Despite my multicultural mind manacles, I manage to make fun of foreigners, here on this website (New English Review, not New Foreign Review) on a few occasions:

Americans
French
French
Hong Kong
French and Chinese
Germans, Dutch, French and Italians
French
Americans
Americans
Americans
Russians
Italians, Dutch in passing
Twenty or so nations, especially the French

And that's just this month.

WaPo: President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The revised supplemental would total about $200 billion, indicating that the cost of the war in Iraq now exceeds $3 billion a week. The bill also covers the far smaller costs of the war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said recently that the cost of the Iraq war has surpassed $330 billion, while the war in Afghanistan has cost $78 billion.

[As Hugh Fitzgerald has pointed out many times these figures do not include a lot of things, for example, the long term care of our injured soldiers.]

In a speech yesterday to the convention of the American Legion in Reno, Nev., Bush gave an optimistic assessment of recent events in the war, now in its fifth year. "There are unmistakable signs that our strategy is achieving the objectives we set out," he said. "The momentum is now on our side."