Re: Egyptian parliament speaker Ahmed Sorour insisted that the cartoons published in Denmark and other recent events showed the existence of a cultural deficit."

Huh? Cultural deficit where - Egypt perhaps?

"Addressing the assembly, European Parliament president Josep Borrell referred to the Mediterranean as "a concentrate of all the problems facing humanity."

Actually sir, it's more like the southern and eastern Mediterranean.

Posted by: johnb at March 30, 2006 4:45 PM

Dangerous idiots working against the taxpayers they should represent!

No Muhammedan should be in any European parliament, ever. To kowtow to them and even giving in to their outrageous demands is the hight of stupidity.

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at March 30, 2006 9:05 PM

Mediterranean? Is that what we now call the Mahgreb countries, the Levant, Egypt, Libya and Turkey?

So are Italy, Spain, Greece part of Europe or the Mediterranean? Only one answer allowed.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at March 30, 2006 11:17 PM

"still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean."
-- from the article, describing Josep Borrell, president of the European Parliament

Perhaps he can start with the following:

In France successive governments over the past 35 years thought that France, and through France Europe, could be strengthened, could become a counterweight to mighty America, if there were some kind of alliance with the newly-rich and therefore newly-powerful (so it was felt) Arabs, and that the policy of "Deux-Rivisme," where both banks (rives) of the Mediterranean would be seen to have much in common, with the only thing dividing them of importance being the Mediterranean itself. In other words, a feature of geography, and not much more, divided France from, say, Algeria.

That was the theory. On that theory, the French allowed millions of Algerians, and large numbers of Moroccans and Tunisians, to settle within Metropolitan France. The promoters of this policy never thought to ask themselves what Islam was all about, even as millions of Muslims made their taciturn way into France. Of course they were there for economic reasons. Of course it was easy for the French to assume, without more, that these Muslim Arabs would in the end integrate into society, just the way the Portuguese immigrants in the 1950s had, or the Vietnamese immigrants. It was not to be. The strength of the belief-system of Islam, which works against integration, works against acceptance of Infidel neighbors and against loyalty to the institutions of the Infidel nation-state, its laws, its customs, its understandings, was not made clear to the rulers by those they counted on for advice. A case of criminal negligence, at all levels of government.

Yet these deux-rivistes are still in power, and it is they, who danced to the Arab tune (Mr. Josep Borrell should be sent, posthaste, a copy of "Eurabia"), hoping in many cases, to be able themselves, or have their friends, relatives, business associates, recylce petrodollars which would naturally be directed to those toward whom the Muslim Arabs felt had done the most to promote Arab interests and the Muslim agenda. And that included giving the Arabs a large say in who taught what about Islam, and where, in France, and this too had consequences.

The deux-rivistes -- of whom Dominique de Villepin is a perfect example, with his gush about Islamic greatness, his conceit that because he was born in 1953 in Sale, next to Rabat, he therefore "understands" the Arabs -- are coming a cropper but do not realize it. Nor do those who in other countries parrotted the same nonsense, the nonsene which says: the only real division between Europe and North Africa is that pesky Mediterranean sea.

No, that sea is the least of it. There is a gulf that divides North Africans from Euroepans. Taht gulf is called Islam. That is what Josep Borell should be studying -- but who can he trust to guide him through the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and understand their effect on Believers, when a small army of apologists for Islam has been deployed all over Western Europe, and now constitutes an army of occupation that controls much of what it is possible to learn about Islam, and what is off-limits for investigation and discussion.

In the 1970s, at the end of his life, the distinguished French scholar of Islam Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq foresaw the terrible consequences of the heedlessness of French immigration policy, and the madness of believing that any Euro-Arab Dialogue could lead to anything but another occasion in which the persistent, relentless, and cunning Arab side would wear down or trick the European side, and gain every advantage. And that is exactly what happened, and happens still. The Arabs and Muslims were given a large say in how Islam would be perceived, and taught, in France and elsewhere in Europe, and they took full advantage of that. Meanwhile, those who had nothing like the scholarly background of Dufroucq, Abel, Fagnan, and other French Orientalists, managed to rise high as advisors on Islam. Such deplorable and missing-the-point researchers (conductors of state-supported "recherches" on this and on that) as Gilles "Wrong Again" Kepel and Olivier "Always Wrong" Roy, rose high, and are still in place, misleading yet another group of French leaders who, no matter what good grades they may have obtained at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration(ENA), never learned to think for themselves.

Posted by: Hugh at March 30, 2006 11:24 PM

....when a small army of apologists for Islam has been deployed all over Western Europe, and now constitutes an army of occupation that controls much of what it is possible to learn about Islam, and what is off-limits for investigation and discussion.

Posted by: Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 30, 2006 11:24 PM

I am not sure I would call it a small army, none the less your analysis is precise and I am afraid an indication of how far Europe has declined in the last 50 years. The demographic WMD continues to spread undermining the very foundations of Western civilization and no one is doing a thing about it.

Europe shame on you!

Posted by: km at March 31, 2006 12:13 AM

This is a little OT, but interesting. I recently read "Collapse of the Third Republic: an inquiry in to the fall of France in 1940" by William Shirer, of "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" fame. The book is a fascinating tale of a nation lacking confidence in itself, terrified of conflict, torn at by interests and parties that despise the ideals of its system of government. The result was a nation that lacked the steel to resist the fascist tide and fell into defeatism, paralysed, and for fear of offending the Nazis, allowed their victory to gather.

This book had a chilling effect on me. I see these same weaknesses in France today. I have my optimistic moments, but for France they are few and far between. This time, it may not be possible to prop the country back up. When I see anarchists rioting for job security, I think there is no hope.

Posted by: Quijybo at March 31, 2006 12:23 AM

""condemned the offence" caused by the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammed as well "as the violence which their publication provoked.""
--from the article.

The cartoons provoked the violence. I will never get used to the sheer insanity of this proposition. To paraphase what Jyllans-Posten's cultural page editor, Flemming Rose: 'This is like blaming a rape victim for wearing a short skirt.'

Posted by: Archimedes at March 31, 2006 2:05 AM

Well put Hugh, as usual.
Appeasement, leading to defeat, is what we are witnessing in Europe.
And we are not doing much better in N. America.

Until we can name the enemy, islam, we cannot even hope to succeed. Islam is a political enemy, like the nazis and the communists, and must be utterly extirpated as a force, not because Christ is the answer, or Buddha, or Confucious, but because islam is fascism at its most dangerous, aiming for total tyranny, total control.
Each step of appeasement weakens our position and our resolve.
Appeasement, re islam, is not ' being reasonable', appeasement is being ignorant, and allowing ignorant people to lead us will prove fatal.

Posted by: dby at March 31, 2006 3:10 AM

So Islam is a vehicle for Mediterranean imperialism? Never mind that Mecca, Medina and Jedda are near the Red Sea.

Posted by: Infidel Pride at March 31, 2006 3:53 AM

"But I had talked with the men of Sobraon, of Chillianwallah, of Moodkee and Ferozeshah. I said: 'Abide a little, and the wind turns. There is no blessing in this work.'" (Kipling, KIM, chapter III)
Granted that the scumbags have been lying to everyone (including themselves) for decades, nevertheless, remember, they're only politicians. They will always do or say whatever it is that helps them stay in power. What matters is whether the public begins to seriously see through their lies; once we do, you will find that they cannot denounce Islam fast enough. It has already happened in Italy, where, after years of dhimmitude, Berlusconi suddenly discovered a spine (not, I assure you, his own; he must have bought one) and started giving people asylum and talking of the evils of multi-culturalism. Why? Because he is after votes, and the few intelligent people about him have noticed that the Italian public are more than sick of Arab/Muslim pressure and barbarity. In recent days, even the left-wing press leader REPUBBLICA, whom one would take for the local version of the Grauniad and the New Jerk Dimes, has had nothing but negative stories about Islam. Sure, it is still clinging nervously to some wreckage of moral equivalence, but the signs are that soon it will throw itself into the high seas of truth. Only the fanatical Communist daily IL MANIFESTO is still clinging to Islam, and in its case it is making very clear that it does so because Muslims are "revolutionary" and "oppressed" - that is, that its hatred for Western civilization is such that it will make common cause with anyone who hates us. But you do not win elections in Italy by being against the West; you may win many votes, but you will reduce yourself to being an everlasting opposition.

Italian public opinion is slowly, grindingly, and increasingly angrily turning against Islam. There are no votes left in being a dhimmi, and it is significant that the opposition, in spite of their justified hatred of the odious Berlusconi, have fallen quite silent about the rescue of Abdel Rahman. There is no luck in going against growing public anger. It is so in Italy, it will increasingly be so elsewhere.

Posted by: Paolo at March 31, 2006 4:02 AM

of whom Dominique de Villepin is a perfect example

He is also a man who has Napoleon as his hero, a man who left a trail of bloodshed and devastation across Europe. This surely tells us something about de Villepin's moral fitness for office.

Posted by: Yojimbo at March 31, 2006 4:29 AM

It is heart-gladdenning to read Paolo's words. Credit for such a change of heart in Italy should also be given to Il Foglio which has supplied constructive and intelligent reporting and commentary on Middle Eastern events. Even mainstream papers like Corriere and LaStampa have been relatively truthful. Magdi Allam, himself an Egyptian Arab and a Muslim, has warned, and possibly awakened the Italians, with his knowledgeable articles in LaStampa and now Corriere. See also his book Kamikaze Made in Europe [in Italian], while not forgetting Oriana Fallaci.

Regarding France, I'd suggest to Hugh that he check out the work of one Henry Laurens, who has assumed the stately status of semi-official [officieux] expert on modern Middle Eastern history, particularly about Israel and the Arabs. He's often put on TV to propagate his twisted version of the 19th and 20th history of Israel and Zionism, marred by omissions of what makes the Arabs look bad, and even by at least one serious invention against or slander of Jews for which he supplies no documentation whatsoever [in a book overflowing with notes]. Naturally, Henry Laurens appears on TV, and lectures at the super-prestigious College de France, and probably consults with Jacques C and Dominique deV. I suggest that Hugh check out his work.

Posted by: Eliyahu at March 31, 2006 4:33 AM

Melanie Phillips has an interesting article on Norman Kember et al on her site. There are some snippets here I hadn't known. The more one finds out, the more sinister CPT appears:

http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001652.html

But I'm inclined to think that it is a waste of time to try to explain such people's behaviour in ideological terms - "liberation theology" or whatever. It seems to me that these attitudes are emotional before they are anything, they merely gain a certain shape through ideology. At the core is not a belief that "the capitalist west [is] an automatic oppressor" but an emotional hostility to the surrounding social reality. This hostility is experienced as meritorious - generous - because it is directed at something that is one's own, viz. Western civilization. (But, of course, it is not personally painful because it is not directed at one's self as an individual.)

Posted by: Yojimbo at March 31, 2006 5:06 AM

Ok - here it is - those of the Sud du Med want everything from us, like our wealth and respect, but wish to give little back.

They believe that our societies are in need of cleansing or augmenting in the Islamic fashion. They view our societies as flawed – almost entirely based on fiction accounts of what Western society is like. There is a serious lack of exposure to outside ideas and discourse, so they have developed an overblown or exaggerated sense of themselves – which is in total disconnect to the way the rest of the world works or sees them.

They emulate the Arabian example - sit on your butt and take in oil money – economic style. Many believe that oil is the key to wealth creation of their country. Because of the Arab example, which they try to imitate faithfully in every way - they resist the sensible and logical changes which would help improve their economies in line with their northern neighbours. Indeed most their help, as investment and tourism comes from their northern neighbours - but is not widely acknowledged - as this reality, seems would get in the way of their perfect view of Arabia.

They are taught to hate basically all that is non Islamic (try visiting during Ramadan, as the days go on, you will see what they think) and there is a deep resentment for much of what we stand for - except that they wish for our money, as ours makes theirs look like play money. And also our things like Levis and Marlborough give them privilege.

These governments want to hold on to Islam and all its incalculable rules, as well as to develop and industrialized economy – but the basis of maintaining an Islamic State means that new ideas are strictly forbidden and are actively suppressed (it is almost embarrassing to talk about new ideas there) – unless you are rich and are allowed to express yourself a little more.

They silently hold to the belief that one day we will be ruled by them, and even if they don’t have anything to speak off - at the moment - they see their system as superior.

Old habits die hard - they see Spain as being theirs - the old Arab Andalusia - or Arabic for Spain.

Most of North Africans are Berber people (something which many are reluctant to say) and many were Christian under the Roman Empire; they have suppressed and Arabized their history, to create a cleansed Islamic account – of what amounted to a Syrian take over of their lands, probably for power's sake, back in 713, which they fought against fiercely and whose rule lasted on and off, for 150 years. It shows you how Arabia is living on borrowed time as the alpha male, over these countries. Just by knowing their history those of the Sud du Med could be freed. The illusion is strong - there at the moment – it’s a matter of national pride.

Posted by: Pass It On at March 31, 2006 7:32 AM

So the Danish cartoonists are offensive and provocateurs; poor defensive VIOLENT ones.

Posted by: mustang65 at March 31, 2006 11:55 AM

Italy, as described above, may be a special case. But lots of non-Italian Europeans (and of course Americans, of the kind who might ordinarily be found supporting the ACLU and belittling the Justice Department and the Patriot Act) visit Italy, which may help others in France and Germany and Scandinavia come to their senses.

What makes Italy a special and more hopeful case? All kinds of things. Compared to other countries in Europe, a much lower incidence of those two mental pathologies, anti-Americanism and antisemitism which have been exploited so cunningly by those promoting Islam and the Arab cause, or causes. The unusually high prestige accorded the profession of journalism, which goes back more to the days of Garibaldi and the awakening of a national consciousness through leaflets, and the press. The main newspaper of Genoa, the city from which Garibaldi launched his campaign, still bears the title "Il 19e Secolo." The main paper of Bologna is called, beautifully and old-fashionedly, Il Resto del Carlino (The change from a carlingo, the name of an old coin in currency long ago, under the Austrians, as if a London paper today bore the title "One farthing short of a guinea." From Luigi Barzini to Indro Montanelli, to Oriana Fallaci, journalists in Italy have been held in high regard, have been writers, keepers of historic memory, cassandras, public figures.

Until Montanelli's death in 2001, he maintained a kind of column, consisting of replies to letters, in the Corriere. Called "La Stanza di Montanelli," it was a repository both of his memories, of the men he had known and events he had lived through, especially during the "ventennio" (20 years) of Fascism, and in his memories, in his corrections to readers, he also reminded them, especially the young, of the need both to study history, and to acquire a historic sense, which is a different thing. If one wanted to know what Ciano had said to Mussollini, or who pushed and who opposed, the Racial Laws, wanted to know more about the balilla or the Fascist leader after whom a street in Rome was about to be named, if the playwright "Edoardo" (Di Filippo) or the comic Macario or some other person came up because some Tizio, some Caio, some Sempronio wanted to know, Montanelli would have an answer. He had been in Ethiopia during Mussolini's campaign, he had lived through World War II, and remembered what the Germans did to the Italian troops in Albania and Greece who refused to continue fighting. He could tell young people about what Lauro de Bosis did, and about Gaetano Salvemini, and the Roselli brothers, or about the referendum on the monarchy after the war, and about Togliatti and Nilde Jotti, and Berlinguer the elegant Communist leader attending church with his wife, and all the names that kept coming back in Italian politics because the cast of characters remained, for a long time, the same.

And he was merely the most famous of the journalists, and there is nothing like the same fame, the same role, for journalists in other European countries, or in America, where neither mastery of the language, nor knowledge of the past, is considered necessary to be a journalist -- all one needs is prior experience as a journalist, at a lower level, at a lesser publication.

Italian newspapers also offer a much greater amount and a much higher level, of articles on art and literature and music and philosophy, and on the history of all four on what was once called the "terza pagina" but now appears elsewhere. The articles that still appear are of a level unknown in the newspapers of the English-speaking world. Writers, including Eugenio Montale and Dino Buzzati, both wrote for the Corriere; Buzzati was on the staff. Other journalists who were writers, or writers who were journalists, include Manlio Cancogni, Francesco Alberoni, Umberto Eco (who has for years had a column in L'Espresso), Beppe Severgnini, and many others. The word "journalist" in America evokes the lowly likes of Tom Friedman, and expensive speaking engagements before business groups. A certain kind of mental formation, made possible where not multiple-choice SAT exams are the rule, but written exams of the most difficult kind, followed by viva-voce examinations, are the kind of obstacle-course that create the conditions that allow the emergence of journalists of a different kind, a different ability, altogether. And despite the dangerous school "reforms" of Letizia Moratti, and Berlusconi's belief that education has to be tied more closely to that great thing, the making of money, the "maturita" is still there, the multiple-choice SATs still held at bay. For now.

Of course there is all kinds of nonsense in the Italian press about America, and Isarel, and Islam. But much less, one finds, than in France. Why should this be? Possibly because the French tradition of anti-Americanism -- America, land of vulgar capitalism and l'horreur economique, and those skyscrapers that so disturbed Georges Duhamel, and then of course the horrible way those Americans opposed the assorted workers's paradises, from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to Cuba. But American soldiers fought Mussolini, and liberated Italy, and there were too many connections, including a kind of popular interest in, and affection for, Italo-Americans who had made good (begininng with Frankie Sinatra and Tony Benedetto, but not liited to them), and too many family connections, for the kind of nasty anti-Americanism that became common in the French press, an anti-Americanism shared by the French left, and by the Gaullist right -- or at least, by De Gaulle. Even today, when the French Defense Minister warns darkly that the riots in France are encouraged by the "Anglo-Saxon press" that, in her view, does not wish France well, one realizes that something strange is going on in France. And that something strange is absent from Italy.

And while there has been a certain amount of idiotic coverage of the Arab war on Israel, with all the usual nonsense about the "plight" of the non-existent "Palestinian people," and some remarkably disgusting graffiti by various left-wing anti-Israel groups, there are also too many with better memories, and those memories include a visceral mistrust -- Mamma, li turchi! -- of Muslims based on centuries of historical experience, and no feeling of tiers-mondisant guilt, such as some French people have apparently experienced, failing to realize that they brought some semblance of civilization to North Africa, brought the French language, and French literature, and French schools, and French hospitals, and French agricultural techniques that allowed Algeria, for 132 years, to taste civilization before it relapsed into Muslim -- something.

The Jewish community is small, its leaders so far dignified, and have included Rabbi Toaff, the Nobel winner Rita Levi-Montalcini, and a famous Roman architect, Bruno Zevi, and now his widow Tullia Zevi. The very littleness of that community helps to win it support within Italy. And memories of World War II in Italy include, as they so often do, memories of atrocities against the Jews -- the racial laws, the massacre of the Fosse Ardeatine which were revived when an attempt was made, about fifteen years ago, to smuggle the German immediately responsible for the massacre (in which Roman Jews constituted the largest number of victims), a Colonel Kappler, out of his Italian prison.

The most distinguishing characteristic of Giancarlo Fini, the current Foreign Minister and head of Alleanza Nazionale, or AN, which has its origins in a fascist party, is the complete repudiation of the racial laws and of antisemitism, and Fini's strong support of Israel caused the real fascists to split from his party, and to form a new group under the modishly outfitted, but unattractive in all respects, Alessandra Mussolini. Antisemitism does not have, and has never had, the place in modern Italy that it has had not only in Germany, but in Spain, in France, and in England. And that too, plays a part, like the muted anti-Americanism, that helps to explain the readiness of Italy to see further, faster, the menace of Islam.

And then there is the question of civilizational self-confidence. It must be hard, livinig in Italy as an Italian, and passing in a single Umbrian hill-town more evidence of permanent human achievement than in all the cities of Islam (excepting Istanbul with its non-Islamic art and architecture). If more and more, Paris and London and New York offer the Tour Monparnasse or some gigantic monuments to mere commerce, then there is not pushed into your consciousness, every day, the fact of a civliization that really does exist, that is a legacy worth defending, and that everything it in it was produced by people who would not, for one minute, have been produced within the world of Islam.

Then there is that one-woman phenomenon, Oriana Fallaci. For four decades she was the most famous journalist, aside from the much older Montanelli, in Italy. Beautiful, with high cheekbones, flashy, able to travel the world and interview all the most famous people, from Kissinger to Mao's successor, with a special interest, it seems, in those third-world leaders who were most dangerous to the West -- Khomeini, Arafat, Khaddafy. And she was known for being on the left, the old-fashioned anti-clerical Republican line of her father, whose political legacy she made her own. As a girl of 14, she had helped older partisans in their fight against the Germans in Florence, the Germans who as a parting gift put explosives in trees, and blew up -- those supposed admirers of culture, with all that Ernst-Jungerian phoniness about them -- the Ponte Vecchio. And she was also of the left, the kind detesting, and detested by, the Greek colonels, or Salazar, or Franco. Her boyfriend, Alexandros Panagoulis, was tortured by the Greek regime, and later died in an automobile accident that was never satisfactorily explained. So her credentials, the credentials that assured her of a hearing among that Italian left, were acquired over a very long period, and honestly. Pf course, her kind of anticlericalism, and her kind of left, no longer exists. Something much more stupid, vicious, coarser, nihilistic, and therefore utterly unacceptable, has replaced that kind of European left. In book after book, over the past four years in Italy, Oriana Fallaci has singlehandedly expressed what millions thought -- but ne'er so well expressed -- and what other millions had not thought, because they had not given a thought to the matter, but recognized in Fallaci's description the truth of many matters. And because she is one of the most famous journalists in Italy and has been for forty years, because she travelled to the most dangerous places and interviewed all the heros of the Italian Left, heroes merely because they were seen as anti-American and third-world, not because they had any intrinisic merit -- such figures as Arafat, Castro, Khomeini, Khaddafy -- and because she herself had written a book about her lover, the Greek left-wing figure Panagoulis, who for years limped because of the bastinado inflicted on him by his Greek jailers, she had the credentials, all the credentials, she would ever need to fend off accusations of being "fascist" and "right-wing" (and she was, to boot, both anti-clerical, the descendant of a long line of Florentine Republicans), and as a girl of fourteen even participated in the Resistance against the German soldiers who mined the trees and bridges of Florence when they retreated before the Allied advance.

And the second figure is the Egyptian-born "Musliim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslim, Magdi Allam, who writes for the Corriere, who appears on the RAI (state-owned television), and who has been particularly good on exposing the taqiyya of local imams and Islamic leaders both in Italy (e.g. Adel Smith) and elsewhere in Europe (see his Lettera aperta a Tariq Ramadan -- a fellow Egyptian Muslim by descent, but the real, Muslim-Brotherhood, thing).

There is Il Foglio, run by Giuliano Ferrara, whose belly belies his intelligence, and which is full of good articles on Islam.

There is a Pope who is not blinded to the nature, and therefore the menace, of Islam by single-minded focus on Soviet Communism as was his predecessor. The quiet cashiering of Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who had headed the Vatican's "dialogue" with Islam, a few months ago is not the only sign that those who have taken in reality are now on top, and not about to give in.

This matters for Italy. But it also matters for French people touring Ravenna and Venice, and Germans on Capri, and British in Livorno, looking for Shelley in all the wrong places. For they will pick up, most likely, some of the local attitudes, and realize that yes, it is alright to be deeply suspicious, and hostile to Islam.

And perhaps even more important is the effect on a certain American gratin, both academic and Hollywoodish, from the very strata of American society least likely to contain admirers of George Bush, most likely to contain those mechnically opposed to the Patriot Act, Republicans, Christina fundamentalists and those who, as at this website, warn darkly and seemingly exaggeratedly of the dangers of Islam. Of course such people ignore the fact that the men they love to hate -- Bush, Cheney, and so on -- have not understood the full meance of Islam, and have sent others on the fool's errand of creating a Light Unto the Muslim Nations, through "democracy" and lots of toys and good things to eat delivered by the Americans, the hardworking and endlessly innocent Little Engine That Could.

These are the very people most anxious about appearing to do the right thing, creatures of intellectual and moral fashion. Willing to be against those who warn about Islam, but also willing, should those fashion winds shift, to take a different tack, and trim their sails to fit that fashion.

Now just imagine what could happen if George Clooney at his villa in Laglio, bought from Heinz Kerry (and where, to the outrage of the locals, Clooney tried to have the waterfront closed to the public so that he could have it for his own private enjoyment -- George Clooney, who Dares Speak Truth to Power, as long as that power is the HUAC back in 1954 and not a member of it is still alive, George Clooney, affable man of the people, as much a man of the people as check-pocketing Bill Clinton, or John Kerry himself -- all of them men of the people). There he is, sitting having his morning collation, his charming Italian servants bustling about, and perhaps he engages one in conversation about what's happening in Italy, something beyond the crash of a Ferrari as it took a lakeside curve, at 4 a.m., up the road in Moltrasio. Now perhaps he will open the discussion up to her (that maid) or to him (that waiter) to see what they think and feel about the world. And if he does, and if the conversation gets around to the war on Iraq, and then one of them begins to speak, animatedly, about how that war "e stupido" and he asks why, and instead of giving him the answer he would expect, begin to raise their voices about how "purtroppo, a problema e qui, in Europa, in Italia" and then begin to tell him of the Muslims who demand this and demand that, are to be found in all the big cities, and now are spreading out so that they are even in places like Como, and soon will be in Moltrasio, in Laglio, at the gates of the Villa Carlotta. And why, George Clooney asks, is that such a problem? And then he will get an earful. And if he is intelligent (and he is intelligent) he might actually listen, he might take some of it in. He might begin to realize that you can keep all kinds of views intact, and still share the views on Islam of such famous former left-wing writers, or freethinkers, such as Fallaci or Fortuyn, and perhaps you ought to jettison your prejudices and prefabricated ideas about those who warn about Islam. He could, and so could all the other salon Bolsheviks, learn a thing or two for those who actually have to take the subway or ride the busses or walk the streets in Rome and Milan and Turin, or who send their children to public school in Marseilles or Lyon, or who live in small towns where the mayor, who is not a fascist, nonetheless wishes to ban the burqa. You might even begin to think -- well, perhaps those who feel most keenly what fascism, what totalitarianism, is all about are those who most keenly sense what is so alarming about Islam. Clooney won't learn about that in Hollywood, but he might, from his servants, and so might other salon Bolsheviks, as they are waited on in their European salons.

And if it could happen to the spoiled denizens of Hollywood, it could also happen to professors, even those who still read with pleasure The New York Review of Books, at that summer house near Lago di Trasimeno, or in a hill-town near Todi or Pisa, or perhaps while on a long or short stay at one of those places -- I Tatti, the American Academy in Rome, Bellagio, where in the common room you can pick up a Corriere and make out what is written by Fallaci or Magdi Allam or someone else who agrees with either or both of them. You can discover that it's okay to dislike, to fear, to worry about, the belief-system of Islam. It's okay to wonder what would happen to the artworks, to the civilization, of Europe -- and even to your ability to spend time in that Europe -- if an when the demographic changes lead to ever more unpleasant and expensive and physically dangerous conditions for all of Europe's Infidels.

And so you return home. Some to Hollywood, some to universities. And you see things now in a new light, a light that your daily life in America, where you must think as The New Duranty Times or Bandar Beacon instruct you to think, does not contain the only take on reality that is possible. Tiens! you say to yourself. And who knows -- you then might, just might, begin to do a little reading, a little thinking, about the matter on your own. It's been known to happen.

Most people, most of the time, have no thoughts about anything. Intellectual fashion, the received ideas of the age, can be followed -- you can choose the Liberal Outfit for Autumn, over here, or the Fall Conservative Collecton, over there. If you are truly daring, you can occasionally wear a conservative scarf with that blouse, or that suit. But don't mix 'n match too much -- the colors and styles will clash, and we can't have that.

So all those glasses of fashion (those half-empty and those half-full) and molds of form will return home with a new, a European fashion -- a fashion picked up in Italy. So that's where it stands, ladies and gentlemen. Be the first on your Malibu Beach block, or is it your ranch in Colorado, Montana, or Texas, or your villa in Laglio, or perhaps even a house a few hundred yards down the road from Beetlebung Corner, where you are working on your next book, after that wonderful summer in Italy. And you hope to be the first on your campus block who, having returned from that villeggiature, will be surprising guests at dinner parties and Seders and commencement-week hilarities, with your new, and surprising views, on Islam. Learned at a waiter's knee, the waiter who serves you the cafe and cornetto, or possibly from what you could glean from the Italian paper, or from the some animated discussion on television about the state of Italy and the world.

It may not matter much how people arrive at having, or at least pretending to have, the right views -- the views that will push public opinion, and those who make the laws, in the right direction. Even if it just starts out as being fashion, picked up on a stay in Italy. The deeper understanding may, in some cases, follow.

In war, one uses every kind of available and effective weapon. The weapon of fashion is also a weapon. The realisation that many people will never think for themselves, but will follow fashion, or what they think is fashionable, or what they think they should think, should lead one to embrace even this use of fashion to create support for what is, after all, the truth. In the case of getting people to support the right measures to deal with the menace of Jihad, it is not how people came to hold or expres the right views, but that they now do so. It is not the journey, but the arrival, that matters. And through the artful exploitation of all kinds of indirections leading toward that final goal, one can give the right directions out.

Now don't you feel like taking a rest after all this? I know I do. Let's have a caffe con latte, or maybe even a cappuccino, if I can find enough change in my pocket -- no, please, it's my treat -- right here, at this cafe, where we can sit and watch half of the town's population walking, arm in arm, talking animatedly, as they perform the passeggiatta. They usually walk from Piazza Matteotti, overlooking the valley, and then down past that 14th-century fountain, and to the left of the statue of Il Capitan, past the Palazzo Popolo, then past the Duomo with that famous baptistery said to rival that of Ghiberti in Florence, and that also contains that cycle of frescoes based on the Old Testament stories that even the Japanese -- maybe especially the Japanese -- come to see, and to its left is the old palazzo of the Gatto-Gatteschi family, and when old Prince Adelmo, the last of his line, died in 1979, he left his palace and its entire contents to the city, and the building is now being turned into a museum devoted to Early Scientific Instruments of the Renaissance, and by the way, you see that smaller building, just as old, right next to it? Yes, that's the one. Well, that is, believe it or not, another museum, but it's the only museum in the world devoted to Comic Strips of the Classic Period, 1880-1940, and you should see the stuff they have in there from Winsor McCay and all sorts of people. Who would have thought it -- just in this one little Italian town. Now people are making the turn, and coming back towards us. Listen. Can you hear that? It's the sound of knives and forks, and glasses clinking. From all those open windows up there, on every side street. Comforting, isn't it? Say, that table looks free. What about sitting here?

Posted by: Hugh at March 31, 2006 3:47 PM

Much of what you say is true, Hugh, but I think I had better caution you all, things might still go wrong big time. There is one dreadful force, even in Italy, which works in favour of all the PC, pro-Muslim, pseudo-leftie garbage; and I mean Italian provinciality and inferiority complex. You are right that the press in Italy has high traditions (although the years of savage internal struggle, for or against Berlusconi, have coarsened and radicalized it, with both La Repubblica and La Stampa becoming unreadable). But the unthinking prejudice in favour of all things foreign, especially north European and north American, mean that Italians will happily swallow any ideological concoction coming from their superiors. I have personally seen Dan Rather and George Clooney interviewed by the Italian press with bated breath and taken absolutely at their own valuation. And you who know what the New York Times is would be astonished at the way it is treated in the Italian press. The blind acceptance of the point of view of the NYT and the like, in turn, fuels anti-Americanism. And now, if we finally, please God, get rid of Berlusconi, we shall have a government half of whose majority is composed of communists, greens and radicals. Mind you, the base of the Communist parties has sent several loud and clear messages to their bosses that they are sick of Muslim crime and arrogance. But these are also the men who read IL MANIFESTO. And it is likely that they shall be governing Italy for the next five years.

Posted by: Paolo at April 1, 2006 5:52 AM