At the gym I watched CNN, an hour of complete mindlessness with Christiane Amanpour, trying to find, trying to understand, trying to come to grips with, what it is, what could it be, what might it be, that makes some "young Muslims" -- a tiny tiny minority of them, contemplate suicide bombings of the kind involved in the plot just revealed in England.
There were "experts" on Islam and "experts" on terror. The first "expert" explained at as long as "young Muslims" (the British equivalent of the "yoots" in "My Cousin Vinny") were exposed to "pictures" of what was going on going on in "Palestine" -- yes, what is going on in "Palestine" or rather Israel (and by the way, why are there not Jewish plotters planning to get revenge on so many countries that have abandoned Israel, thrown it to the Arab and Muslim wolves?) -- and in "Iraq" and in "Chechnya" and in "Afghanistan" and, continued the "expert," as long as these yoots believed that Islam was being attacked, Islam was under siege, their rage would continue to grow.
There was more in this vein. There was a Muslim, a friend of two brothers who had been picked up for their part in the plane-bombing plot, who kept saying that "all communities -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, all of them" have their "extremists" and all of them occasionally get out of control, and in any case he went on and on about how there was nothing, absolutely nothing, except indignation at the terrible things being done to Muslims that could conceivably explain these Muslim plans and plots and mass murders, past, and passing, and to come.
And among those "experts" was Lawrence Wright, who proceeded to explain that the "Arabs and Muslims" in the United States were not a worry. They were so much better integrated, because -- well, because they were, because 70% of them earned over $50,000 and so many of them had college degrees and so on. It was as if none of the information that has been so widely disseminated about how "disproportionately" the well-educated or rather, well-degreed and well-off Muslims are represented in the ranks of Muslim terrorists had never reached him. Nor has it reached the other fellow who came after, who said that "Lawrence Wright is absolutely correct" in his explanation of why the "Muslim community" in the United States is so much less threatening.
Not a single person appeared to think that the true explanation was other: there are at most 3 million declared Muslims in the United States, with a population of 300 million. Of those, 2 million are Black Muslims, a group whose practices, and attitudes, lead them to be regarded as not real or full Muslims by the real, Pakistani or Arab variety. That leaves at most 1 million Muslims out of a population of 300 million. And far more of those 300 million are believing Christians. And there are also many more Jews than there are in Great Britain. Furthermore, American attitudes are not colored by any diseased guilt over some Empire, nor are Americans quite so inclined to be influenced by the pro-Arab lobbies and agents that long ago took over the Foreign Office, but have also, in the past few decades, successfully infiltrated into the upper reaches of the BBC and many of the main newspapers. America, thank god, remains different.
But the main thing, of course, is merely that Muslims are not as numerous as they are in Great Britain. Out of a population that is 1/5 the size of that in America, Great Britain has 1.5 times as many Muslims (that "Muslim friend of two brothers picked up" predictably exaggerated their numbers, claiming there are "2.2 million Muslims" in Great Britain). In other words, in proportion to the non-Muslim population, Muslims in Great Britain are seven times as numerous as Muslims are in the United States. And the same obtains in other European countries, where the Infidel governments and the most farseeing citizens are tearing their hair out at the thought that this problem was entirely the result of negligence, of ignorance of the belief-system of Islam.
Oh, she looked, Christiane Amanpour. Indeed she did. She tried to elicit answers from that Muslim frien of those Muslim brothers. She asked first one expert on "terrorism" , and then another, and another, and another, to find out what it is that "makes them do it." She sought the answer here, she sought the answer there, she sought her answer everywhere. But that Answer proved as elusive for Christiane Amanpour as did, for the French, that demmed elusive Pimpernel, played long ago, in a different England, by that elegant immigrant, who had no trouble "integrating" into England despite his Hungarian Jewish background, a certain Leslie (Steiner) Howard.
It's lovely, isn't it, what's done to cultivate a sense of victimhood in Pakistani youths -- showing them pictures of Palestinians suffering such "humiliations" at the hands of Israel as being searched for bombs at checkpoints and being treated in Israeli hospitals if they happen to be among the collaterol damage inflicted by a shahid.
Thus, they rally behind Nazrallah as a hero, when he is nothing more than the puppet of Damascus and Tehran as the great "resistance leader" who thought the kidnapping of a couple of Israel soldiers would gain the release of three murderous Lebanese "resistors".
How easily they keep their heads in the sand, totally ignorant of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of genuine prisoners of conscience -- Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian -- who languish in Syrian and Iranian prisons. How blind they must be to refuse to see that Nazrallah's purpose was purely to sidetrack western attention from the investigations into Rafiq Hariri's assassination by Syria, aided and abetted, no doubt by Hezbollah, and from Iran's nuclear weapon-building activities. How blind as well they must be to fail to understand who really used Lebanese Shias as sacrificial lambs while he hid out in the safety of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, taking orders from Khomeini.
Christiane, daughter of the Shah's Iran, who fled after the revolution, whose half-Christian, half-Muslim background wouldn't have exactly made her Miss Iran, whose secular parents were no doubt horrified by the events of 1979; Christiane should ask another question: Was The Shah's Iran really the deviation and was everything else 'the real Islam?' But her puny mind cannot tackle this concept. Also, why does she seem to look down at the camera? at her guests? This is not good dhimmi behavior, but her wearing of the veil to interview the chimp in chief was. Christiane watches events with limp-wristed erudition. How can a socialist government in England with a victorious PC culture spawn so many, almost uncountable terroristsP: moms with daughters, pregnant moms, couples . . . not your Father's terrorists who had beards and were grim, lived in Paris, plotting return to Tehran via cassete. She must wonder the viability of her child's future. A child spawned with Jamie Rubin . . . spokeswoman(man) for the Clinton State Department, defender ubber alles of the Balkan Muslim over the Serb. He did all this; Christianne did all her part in defense of the Balkan Muslim, represented the best, the very best, of the dolt journalistic crowd, C students to the last cretin, never read a book on Jihad(probably never read a book in total); Rubin and Ammanpour, representatives of everything Clinton, half-Christian and Jew, sit perplexed in the luxury of their London digs, reading the appropriate newspapers, attend the Davos idiocy, dress really nice, work out harder than Hugh does, they watch the world gone crazy with huge missles knifing through Haifa's homes, they watch scores, hundreds, thousands of terrorists down the street in their own country, and they wonder about their thousands and thousands of Jihadi supporters drawn from a pool over a million strong. A pool of Muslims who don't much like Clinton, who don't go to Davos, who don't dress nice. Rubin and Christiane wonder how secure their London is: just who will be fighting on the beaches, on the streets?
Perhaps Christianne should have Robert Spencer and Hugh Fitzgerald on the next "Larry King alive?" to enlighten her about demographics and the wonderfull, immutable Religion of Peace.
I suppose going to gym with Christiane Amanpour in sight is to be considered as doping. Next time use some better staff (like serge trifkovic or robert spenser)
what might it be, that makes some "young Muslims" -- a tiny tiny minority of them, contemplate suicide bombings
What persuades a young man to pilot an aircraft into the deck of a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier ? what is it that made a minority of Japanese pilots not want to go home ? What was it about the Mitsubishi Zero that made the pilot drink sake before flying it and fail to return it to base ?
Does the word Fanaticism hold any meaning ?
"sit perplexed in the luxury of their London digs, reading the appropriate newspapers, attend the Davos idiocy, dress really nice, work out harder than Hugh does..."
-- from a posting above
How do you know how hard I exercise? And how do you know how hard James Rubin and Christiane Ahmanpour, locked in that celebrity mariage blanc that started in the maison blanche, work out?
"among those "experts" was Lawrence Wright, who proceeded to explain that the "Arabs and Muslims" in the United States were not a worry. They were so much better integrated, because -- well, because they were, because 70% of them earned over $50,000 and so many of them had college degrees and so on. It was as if none of the information that has been so widely disseminated about how "disproportionately" the well-educated or rather, well-degreed and well-off Muslims are represented in the ranks of Muslim terrorists had never reached him."
And on another channel there will probably be an 'expert' telling us all about the 'poverty'. Calls for more affirmitive action so they can have more of this 'poverty' and infiltrate more organisations.Plus, since when does money (or possession of a degree) prove anything about integration?
Bin Laden has lots of money.
"It was as if none of the information that has been so widely disseminated about how "disproportionately" the well-educated or rather, well-degreed and well-off Muslims are represented in the ranks of Muslim terrorists had never reached him."
This is not a problem of information reaching people. It is a problem of how that information is interpreted -- into which interpretative template that information is fit.
One could cause information to reach the likes of Lawrence Wright or the harelipped Christiane Amanpour until the cows come home, but that information will just become fuel to feed and energize their template.
That template is the PC multiculturalist template. And it is the dominant template in the West, not just a problem of, or perpetuated by, elites. Elites might be oilier than the common man in their ability to articulate the semi-incoherent balderdash upon which this dominant template rests, but their enthrallment to it is not much different, nor more prevalent, than is the common man's.
How do you know how hard I exercise?
Hey Hugh, do you look like D,C. Watson? :) (sorry for the emoticon)
One of the built-in biases of the Left (which includes the major media) is their economic interpretation of world history and world events. They attribute all politics and all conflicts to economics. This is not new; it goes back at least as far as historians like Charles Beard.
Liberals seem to be utterly incapable of understanding religion as a potentially more potent political force than economics. Domestically, they were incapable of understanding why a devout Christian voter would vote for a candidate on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage rather than on the issue of the economy. Internationally, they cannot grasp Islamic jihad as a religious war. Thus they constantly look for economic explanations for Islamic terrorism: poverty, the "rights of the Palestinians" (i.e. a homeland, land being an economic issue), alleged Western "colonialism," and so on.
"sorry for the emoticon..."
If you are sorry for the emoticon, why use it? Not using an emoticon means never having to say you're sorry.
Hugh,
Watching Amanpour on CNN at the gym is the best way to warm up and put you in a fighting mood, right before you move on to working with the punching bag.
:)
Emoticonned again, this time brazenly. I refuse to be conned, or emoticonned. God (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) gave us the gift of language. It is ungrateful not to take full advantage of that gift. We use emoticons when we speak to one another: facial gestures, hand gestures, sometimes accompanying, sometimes supplementing or substituting for, speech.
But it is different when it comes to the written language. If God (or that reasonable facsimile thereof) had wanted us to use emoticons, he would have provided them early on.
If we acquiesce in this, how long before the sacred texts will have to be rewritten for the semi-demi-hemi-quavering young, so uncertain in their use of language, so ill at ease with words:
Pol. "What are you reading, my lord?"
H. "Emoticons, emoticons, emoticons."
Speaking of emoticons....
Emoticons for Infidels......
Muhammad
(((:~{>
Muhammad playing Little Orphan Annie
(((8~{>
Muhammad as a pirate
(((P~{>
Muhammad on a bad turban day
))):~{>
Muhammad with sand in his eye
(((;~{>
Muhammad wearing sunglasses
(((B~{>
Muhammad giving the raspberry.
(((:~{P>
Giving Muhammad the raspberry.
;-P
Mohammed with a lit fuse coming out of his turban
*-()(:~{>
Mohammed wearing a propeller beanie instead of a turban
I-(:~{>
Mohammed laughing at the previous emoticon
(((:~{D>
Mohammed eating a cheese danish!
(((:~{@>
Saw Christiane's interview too. Journalists struggle because they haven't taken the time to truely educate themselves...or they get educated by a Muslim expert who doen't tell them the truth. All the pieces would 'fit' if they just would take a lesson from Robert or Hugh!
How do you know how hard I exercise?
Hey Hugh, do you look like D,C. Watson? :) (sorry for the emoticon)
Let's try it like this:
How do you know how hard I exercise?
Hey Hugh, do you look like D,C. Watson? I smilingly, slyly asked.
Now I'll answer.
No. Much more menacing, altogether more sinister. When I look in the mirror I scare myself.
Apropos, and also a propos miroirs, mirrors, cheval-glasses, zerkala, and the like, something for the small but select group of Russian visitors to this website:
PERED ZERKALOM
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita*
Ya, ya, ya! Chto za dikoe slovo!
Neuzheli von tot - eto ya?
Razve mama lyubila takogo,
Zhelto-serogo, polusedogo
I vseznayushego, kak zmeya?
Razve mal'chik, v Ostankine letom
Tancevavshii na dachnyh balah,-
Eto ya, tot, kto kazhdym otvetom
Zheltorotym vnushaet poetam
Otvrashenie, zlobu i strah?
Razve tot, kto v polnochnye spory
Vsyu mal'chishech'yu vkladyval pryt',-
Eto ya, tot zhe samyi, kotoryi
Na tragicheskie razgovory
Nauchilsya molchat' i shutit'?
Vprochem - tak i vsegda na sredine
Rokovogo zemnogo puti:
Ot nichtozhnoi prichiny - k prichine,
A glyadish' - zaplutalsya v pustyne,
I svoih zhe sledov ne naiti.
Da, menya ne pantera pryzhkami
Na parizhskii cherdak zagnala.
I Virgiliya net za plechami,-
Tol'ko est' odinochestvo - v rame
Govoryashego pravdu stekla.
* Na seredine puti nashei zhizni (ital.)
18-23 iyulya 1924, Parizh
Et in Ostankino ego, I allow myself to note, but unlike V. Kh. who danced there one summer at the Sheremetev estate, I merely slept in a room at the Gostinitsa Ostankino as arranged by Intourist, oh so many years ago.
Hugh/
You scare yourself before the mirror. You are a sceptic and perhaps a rebel. You are literate and literary. Perhaps you are a modern day, clandestine, member of Serapionovy Bratya. If so you are a worthy successor to Veniamin Kaverin - have you identified all of your eleven axioms yet?
Dominic.
"You are a sceptic and perhaps a rebel."
-- from a posting above
Amazing. In a Chinese restaurant, not two weeks ago, I studied the paper placemat in front of me, and looked down at the years assigned according to the rules of Chinese astrology, and found the year of my birth, 1908 if memory serves, and at my age, by gad, it better, listed under the Year of the Pig or the Year of the Rat or the Year of the Dog or the Year of the Snake(I didn't keep the paper placemat and can't remember which), and all-knowing placemat informed me, as someone born in the Year of (that Rat, that Dog, that Pig, that Snake) that "you are a skeptic and perhaps a rebel."
Can 1.5 billion Chinese and one non-Chinese poster at Jihad Watch all be wrong?
Not likely.
As for those Serapion Brothers, all such groups, even if individual members at the time or later on show talent, are always silly seeming, and embarrassing for all concerned. But especially when they have some stupid manifesto or motto, something about changing literature or art or stuff like that. If, as I suspect, the Serapion Brothers were boosters of "non-conformist art," and since so many of them turned out to be Soviet conformists when they had the misfortune to live long lives as members of the Union of Soviet Writers (meeting this month of remaining members to be held in Dom Druzhby, the former Morozov mansion, for an evening of reminiscence and vodka and zakuski) I suspect they did programmatically begin as "non-conformists," then I wouldn't touch it all with a ten-foot pole. On the other hand, Viktor Shklovsky was a member. Then there was that man named Vladimir Pozner, and remember, back in the late 1980s, when the then-Soviet now-brave-new-something journalist Vladimir Pozner was on American television? All I could think of was "Serapion Brothers, Serapion Brothers. Could he be the son, grandson? Well, I told myself, it's a common name, a name like Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov, or more likely Mikhail Levin.
Most interesting to me in the list of Serapion Brothers is the name of Mikhail Slonimsky, but only because I read a few months ago his brother Nicholas Slonimsky's "Perfect Pitch." Nicholas Slonimsky, the famous musicologist and the author of "A History of Musical Invective," was related to all kinds of people -- to the true first-in-time inventor of the telegraph, before Morse, a man who didn't bother to publicly announce his achievement, much less try to get a patent (yes, I know the Soviets, the Bolshaya Sovetyskaya Entsiklopedia, was always claiming credit for Russian inventors, but in this case the story is not merely verisimilar but convincing, and true -- la pura, sacrosancta verita), and also to Vengerov, the famous Pushkinist mentioned in "Ada," the one who compiled that useful list of documents "Pushkin v zhizni" that...oops, sorry, no that was Veresaev, forget that, and also to the Polish poet Antoni Slonimski, who was much more famous in Poland than was Mikhail Slonimsky in the Soviet Union, and who died in a ridiculous and quite unnecessary automobile accident when the car he was not driving but riding in hit a pole, or another car, or something.
What the Serapion Brothers have to do with me I haven't the faintest.
Oh, and by the way, did you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?
Ah the perpetual big lie of the leftist liberal major media...sorry my friend but from where I sit (or stand as the case may be) the major media is most decidedly "conservative" that is it is financed by advertising, which of course is corporate and corporate is Wall street and big business which is conservative..and if I recall correctly (and I most certainly do) it was the major media (which is conservative not liberal) that pushed Dubya down our throats, for two elections and pushed and prodded and supported the insane invasion of Iraq, thus overthrowing a secular mad man, that had no problem keeping those Iranian backed Shi'a and those Al Qaeda prone Sunni Wahhabi's in line.
So now with the grand adventure under his belt, Duby and the neo cons have made Iraq not only safe for, but a haven for an expanded Iranian shi'a empire.. and thanks now to Dubya we have a Shi'a crescent (Hizballah supporting and all of that rot) running from Tehran to Beirut (and beyond), and the so called "liberal" "leftist" media did not demur nor whimper a wisp of dissent to the grandiose and insane schemes of that sociopathic moron and his coterie of handlers that you and other radical rightists so much love(d) and defend(ed).
Hugh/
I only know Slonimsky from his time at Baker's and of course his oeuvre 'The Lexicon of Musical Invective'. I'm young, I'm young. Give me time to learn - we haven't all had since 1908!
As for V.V. Smidovich, well, we all have sisters (or at least I do - dash it) and they do seem to live in some sort of Underground Kingdom, or is that too sexist a thing to say, do you think, in the light of the longings of Ninka and Lelka?
But how did you come to confuse the violinist with the author? Ah, of course, not enough time for Razdumye. How could I have been so silly as not to spot that - especially since you have to spend so much time telling us Nevydumannoiey Rasskazy o Proshlom which we ought to know, anyway, if we had paid attention at school!
Dominic.
Hugh/
And as for the Serapionovy Bratya - I was merely teasing. I know, I know, I shouldn't, but you are an irresistible target because your replies are always so droll. They are moments of light relief, and erudition, amongst the travails of this world.
Dominic.
Hugh/
Hmmm, perhaps that last post of mine was as inappropriate as that line from Gogol which you quoted (he must have regretted it later). But then, better inappropriate than being struck by a fly-whisk, although Ajami may disagree with me of course. However, I am not a boy from nowhere.
Dominic.
Why would Gogol regret that last line of "Notes of a Madman"? Which part would he regret? The Bey or Dey? The wart? The wart being situated under the Bey or Dey's nose? If Gogol had regretted that, then he might end up regretting not merely the phrase "pod nosom" but that other story, the one called "Nos" and then perhaps "Nevskiy Prospekt" and then "The Overcoat" (which, famously in some AASS circles, was once referred to in Russian, by a sweating graduate student undergoing the oral examination for doctoral candidates, as "Pal'to") and then...well, who knows.
And god knows, bog znaet, and for that matter chort znaet, how much less interesting life on this giddy globe would be without those Petersburg Tales. As someone once observed, in another last line, with a rising fall, skuchno na etom svete, gospoda. Ladies and gentlemen, life is boring [or "it's boring here below" or "the world is a bore"}
So I hope you regret having claimed that Gogol must have regretted a line he could not possibly have regretted, but rather must have rejoiced in, must have been a well-pleased pleaser.
Well Hugh, it doesn't seem you answered my question if you had ever read Sienkiewicz, so I'll ask this, have you ever read The Red Wheel books by Solzhenitsyn? If so, what did you think of them?
You ought to write some book reviews.
And Spencer ought to include an FAQ section on this website. Such as "is islam REALLY a religion of peace?" And "what does the history of islam suggest on the possibility of islam co-existing permanently with the West." Stuff like that.
Hugh/
I never curse. John Eglinton (and, perhaps, Bulgakov's Margarita) would agree with me, however, that a provincial Government Inspector (for it could be construed that such is my rank in this modern world) should certainly be aware that 'nothing is as it seems' (shades of the revenuers in the early eighteen-hundreds on the South coast of England).
Wasn't it Dorothy Parker Parker who quipped - "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. "
However, it is late, sweet prince, here on this sceptered isle, and "I am afraid I am due at the homestead" (Morpheus's place, that is, where I doubt there'll be three orgasms - or the verbal ellipsis of 'pod nosom').
But, ere I depart, you have convinced me. I do regret. 'Tis only now, upon reflection, that I see the import of the line. But then, I have not your years and such moments of reflection (enjoyment?, dawning realisation?) still occur.
Heavens, you obviously know that Gogol was au fait with the works of Cervantes (hardly surprising, really) but the odd thing is that Cervantes spent five years as a prisoner of the Bey of Algiers and you know that too. You understand shiska too, and its varied interpretations/translations/meanings, and the depths of cultural knowledge that the 'Arabesques' reveal Gogol had. Somehow, I feel less alone. Thank-you.
Now, however, since I have to work on the morrow,
Dobry vyecher.
Dominic.
Nicholas Slonimsky, the famous musicologist and the author of "A History of Musical Invective," - Hugh
Lexicon, actually, not History.
But have you found a copy yet? It's a scream.
Right. Lexicon. A sturdy word, solid, yet beautiful withal. Could be the name of a car. Introducing the new, 2007 Lexicon. Principals in one of those branding or naming consultancies, please take note. Much more where that comes from.
No, haven't found and haven't looked, but will try the local library.
Good question.
americaningermany/
Have you never read Ulysses? Actually, let me re-phrase that. Have you ever read anything?
Dominic.