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ce-chairman of governors at Feversham College, Britain’s first state-funded Muslim secondary school, said the case was an example of growing anti-Islamic sentiment in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.

But this puts the whole affair into better perspective:

Mr Justice Bennett suggested that Miss Begum may have been influenced by her older brother, Shuweb Rahman, who became her litigant-friend in court. “One wonders why it should have been her brother who articulated what the claimant was perfectly capable of saying herself,” he said.

During the trial Yasmin Bevan, the head teacher of the comprehensive, said that one of the reasons the school maintained its ban on the jilbab was to help children to resist the efforts of extremist Muslim groups to recruit them.

Meanwhile, from the girl’s lawyer: “The family feels this decision doesn’t help integrate Muslims within our society”. To which I can do no better than echo one of the comments at lgf:

Wrong, that’s exactly what it’s aimed at doing, and that’s why they don’t like the decision.

Suck it up, Mohammed, or go back to the dusty third world hellhole from whence you came.

Okay, literalists might complain that the dusty third world hellhole in this case is, um, Luton, but I can get behind the sentiment.

ader must be able to withstand criticism and incitement. That’s true. But when they try to kill—I felt that someone was going to kill.

To kill you? Yeah. Or to cause bloodshed within Fatah itself.

How many of these things were instigated by Chairman Arafat? I wouldn’t want to mention anyone by name. But I’ll give you something to understand: I don’t have any relationship with the chairman from the resignation to this day.

When you’re in Ramallah, you don’t meet with him? I live in Ramallah and he’s 100 meters away. I don’t go to him, I don’t meet with him, I don’t have any relations with him.

In what circumstances would you be willing to return to this position? No circumstances whatsoever. I will not go back.

200 in March 2003 to about 1,000 now. A new office has opened in France, and last summer, the league deployed a new political wing, the Muslim Democratic Party, to represent its views in European Parliamentary elections this year.

For its adherents, the AEL offers a united platform and an amplified voice. This is especially true for the second- and third-generation children of immigrants who came here — primarily from Turkey and Morocco — as guest workers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, kids struggling to define their identity in a post-9/11 and increasingly nationalistic Europe. The children and even the grandchildren of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants are still considered “Turkish” or “Moroccan,” rather than Dutch or Belgian. To these boys, Jahjah is a role model, a hero; for girls, he is a star. One newspaper quoted a young girl saying to Jahjah’s bodyguards outside a talk he gave in Holland: “I just want to see him in the real.”

In person and via the league’s Web site, Jahjah speaks directly to these disenfranchised youth. He is deeply mistrustful of the Western press, arguing that no matter what he says, he will be misquoted or that his words will be twisted by “the Zionist lobby” in an effort to turn popular opinion against him. Non-Muslim reporters are barred from Jahjah’s lectures and speeches, and he pointedly ignored Salon’s several attempts to reach him. Other AEL officers rarely speak to non-Muslim members of the press.

However, Jahjah’s Belgian lieutenant, Azzuz, agreed to an interview in December, after a series of protests that led to the arrest of 10 league members — including some who hung the Palestinian flag over the Dutch Parliament building in The Hague and Azzuz’s own television caper. Speaking by phone from Antwerp, the 27-year-old Belgian AEL leader, the son of Moroccan immigrants, was cordial but direct. The deaths of 9/11 were “collateral damage” — a term, he says, that Muslims learned from Americans. “Finally, something had happened to those who kill our women and children,” he said of the terror strikes that have reshaped world politics. “But America still blames others. They didn’t learn their lesson at all.” What lesson is that? “Stop supporting the terrorist state of Israel,” Azzuz replied. George Bush “doesn’t hold the strings,” he says, the Zionists do.

I’ve been a regular visitor to Antwerp for a number of years now (my wife is from there). Nothing gets the Flemish going as much as the topic of immigration; I’ve got so used to the complaints about the Moroccans (it’s always “the Moroccans”) that I’ve tended to block it out and change the subject, even though the moans have recently become even more anguished. “Nice people”, I think, patronisingly, “but what a shame about their racism.”

Yesterday my wife met an old school friend, still living in Antwerp: difficult to classify her as the usual bourgeoise scared by change: she hates the Flemish nationalist Vlaams Blok party, and does voluntary work for a Gay Rights group. Her take on Antwerp: there are now whole areas of the city she’s scared to go alone, and, yep, it’s all down to the Moroccans. My smug dismissal of these people as racist is beginning to look a bit threadbare.

[…]

The UN turned a blind eye to signs that Saddam was bribing cronies at home and abroad with black market oil vouchers, and was skimming billions from funds meant for food and medicine, demanding secret, 10 per cent “kickbacks” on humanitarian contracts.

The UN recently claimed it “learned of the 10 per cent kickback scheme only after the end of major combat operations” in 2003.

A lie, said Mr Soussan, recalling the hapless Swedish company that called in 2000, seeking UN help after being asked to pay kickbacks. The Swedes’ plea was quickly lost in red tape and inter-office turf wars. After a “Kafka-esque” flurry of internal memos, the Swedes were told to complain to their own government.

It did not help that, inside the Security Council, France, Russia and China openly opposed sanctions, threatening doom for any UN official tempted to blow the whistle on Saddam’s cheating.

“Most high level UN employees need to be on good terms with key countries in the Security Council if they want to have a career.”

Now top UN officials are under investigation. Mr Soussan hopes the shock will force a major debate on how to deal with rogue regimes.

“The oil-for-food programme was a deal with the devil. The problem is, that we didn’t act as if this was the devil, we acted as if this was a legitimate regime,” he said.

/a>; also mentioned at Normblog):

She [the German researcher] and her colleagues conducted a series of experiments on the 9-year-old border collie after his owners claimed he knew the names of about 200 objects — his collection of toys, balls and stuffed animals.

In the first experiment, the researchers put 10 of Rico’s toys in one room and Rico and his owner in another. The investigators then instructed the owner to order Rico to fetch two randomly selected items. As Rico ran into the other room and began searching for the items, he could not have picked up any hints from his owner because the owner was out of sight.

In 40 tests, Rico got it right 37 times, demonstrating he had a vocabulary comparable to dolphins, apes, sea lions and parrots that have undergone extensive training.

Notice the phrasing: the dog, apparently, has a “vocabulary”.

The findings are the latest evidence that animals are capable of more complex communication than had been thought, and that dogs, in particular, are especially astute at comprehending their human companions.

Rico’s talents are prompting some scientists to go so far as to speculate that dogs might even have the capacity to speak — like Mister Ed, the talking horse in the 1960s television show — if only they had the necessary anatomy.

“If Rico had a human vocal tract, one would presume that he should be able to say the names of the items as well, or at least try to do so,” said Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who studies animal communication and intelligence at Georgia State University. “It also raises the issue of whether Rico and/or other dogs or other mammals might already be trying to say words, but have great difficulty being understood.”

Oh bollocks. What’s happening here is surely not that remarkable. Dogs have excellent hearing: they can discriminate between different words. But let’s not get carried away: they don’t “understand” the words: they respond to them as commands. If for example the dog’s owner had trained the dog differently, it would go and fetch a ball, say, on the command “fetch”, a book on the command “bingo”, and a teddy bear on the command “vomit”. There’s no vocabulary, no understanding of the word itself, merely an understanding of what’s required of it.

The article continues:

But scientists have since determined that many species have complex vocalizations that enable them to communicate sophisticated information among themselves. And researchers have been able to teach many creatures to recognize human symbols and language. A bonobo ape named Kanzi, for example, can understand dozens of symbols. Alex, an African gray parrot, can identify a wide array of objects, shapes, colors and materials. And recent studies have shown that dogs are remarkably adept at reading human gestures.

But again the conclusions – helped by the carefree use of that word “understand” – are simply not warranted by the evidence. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has spent years trying to get bonobo chimps to communicate through language (in the great tradition of Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling’s attempts to teach ravens to fly underwater), but her conclusions are always marred by her determination to present the results in the best light possible. Kanzi can combine symbols (pictures) in complex ways to get what it wants, certainly, but that can (and should, by Occam’s razor) be explained by straightforward learning, as encountered in simpler form with those staples of the experimental psychology lab, rats and pigeons, rather than asserting, as Savage-Rumbaugh constantly does, that if only her poor beasts had human vocal tracts they’d be chattering away in English.

Surely one of the 20th century greats. Took the passion and soul of black gospel and added low-down-and-dirty lyrics….whew! “What’d I Say”, “I Got A Woman”, “It Should’ve Been Me”, “Lonely Avenue”…. And that’s just one side of the man.

A comment at LGF (where, perhaps unsurprisingly, their fondest memory is of his version of “God Bless America”) – “he was an incredible voice, a great pianist, but really lousy at watching TV.” Hmm, I’m really not sure what to make of that……

who has spent a large part of their career and research work investigating this very problem and had done some of the key work in this area. In this field if you are going to make allegations that a father or mother has suffocated their baby you have got to be pretty certain. Because it is such a serious allegation, your evidence has got to be very strong before you consider making it.”

At the time that Professor Southall contacted police in 2000, Mrs Clark was serving a double life sentence for murdering their sons, Christopher and Harry. The solicitor, 39, was freed on appeal last year.

Not a trace of doubt; not a hint of an apology. On the basis of a TV programme the man has the arrogance to ring the police and suggest that the father was a murderer and that their remaining child should be taken into care.

Professor Southall told the hearing that after raising his initial concerns with police he contacted two of the paediatric experts involved in Mrs Clark’s trial, Sir Roy Meadow and Professor Michael Green, to ask their opinion. “I told Professor Green I was incredibly worried about (the Clark’s surviving baby and please could he do something about this,” Professor Southall told the hearing. “He also became concerned. He was very shaken.” The hearing continues.

Professor Southall is already the subject of complaints about his methods of secretly filming parents he suspected of child abuse. And Sir Roy Meadow’s reputation is effectively in tatters “after courts overturned three murder convictions against mothers jailed on the basis of his expert evidence.”

Both Southall and Meadow are keen proponents of – “experts on”, as they would have you believe – Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy.

Good to see that the suburban English murder is still in fine fettle. Orwell would have been proud:

A huge police manhunt was under way today for a man suspected of killing his wife and stacking her dismembered remains in the fridge. […]

Her remains were discovered at their £500,000 north Kingston home close to the River Thames by Mr Dalton’s father when he went to get some milk from the couple’s fridge.

The father had popped round to visit the couple and, finding no one at home, had let himself in.

After making a cup of tea he opened the fridge door to get some milk and found the chopped-up remains of Tae Hui Kang wrapped in plastic bags on the shelves.

A horribly compelling image….

In classic fashion, as the neighbours informed reporters, they “kept themselves to themselves”:

One said: “We hardly saw them except to say hello. They seemed a nice couple.”

Neighbour David Richardson said: “Basically we didn’t see them, I saw her with what looked like a pram a couple of weeks ago but they didn’t tend to mix, certainly they didn’t speak to me and I don’t believe to others either.”

Meanwhile the next-door neighbour, who also declined to give his name, said that the couple had lived in the house for around two years.

“We just said hello that’s all, I have heard the name Paul but they kept themselves to themselves. As far as I am concerned they were the nicest neighbours we’ve had.”

He added: “He wasn’t what I would call normal – meaning friendly – he just said hello.”

The neighbour added that he had only seen the woman once in May of this year when they had just come back from shopping.

ed as ‘sex workers’, with a ‘human right’ to ply their trade no less than if they chose to be a bank clerk or a nurse.

Across the board of irregular behaviour — drugs, gambling, drinking — the government’s attitude has been to abandon attempts to reduce it and instead to make it easier to indulge, on the basis that it is not the behaviour itself but the attempt to stop it which is harmful. […]

Our culture is now a thoroughly utilitarian one, in which the only concern is not that any behaviour is inherently wrong and should be stopped but merely to minimise demonstrably harmful effects such as disease.

You wouldn’t think from reading this that part of the proposed government package is in fact to imprison those caught paying for sex:

Britain’s prostitution laws are to undergo their biggest overhaul for 50 years in a government review that could lead to tough jail terms for men who pay for sex.

Ministers are also looking to offer women an escape route out of street prostitution by creating toleration zones where prostitutes can be offered careers counselling and financial advice.

The proposals, to be unveiled by the Home Office later this summer, are expected to offer a “carrot and stick “approach to the regulation of the industry.

Under the current law, paying for sex is not illegal. Instead, prostitution is controlled by strict offences that prohibit associated acts such as kerb-crawling, soliciting, pimping and brothel-keeping.

One of the proposals is to follow the lead of Sweden where men can be imprisoned for up to six months if they are caught paying for sex.

But the focus of the Government’s review will be on helping women to escape prostitution by creating managed zones in Britain’s cities where they would be offered access to clinics for the treatment of sexual diseases and drug addiction.

Toleration zones, which have been unofficially tried in a number of British cities, including Manchester and Bolton, allow street sex workers to operate in strictly defined areas away from residential streets.

The Home Office review team has heard evidence in support of managed zones from senior police officers, magistrates, drugs advisers and groups representing sex workers in this country.

There are reasonable grounds for criticising this, mainly from those who dislike this kind of social engineering on the part of government, but I’m struggling to see it as part of the decline of Western civilisation as Phillips seems to. “Selling the body for sex no longer shocks…” It’s arguable, on the contrary, that prostitution is considered less acceptable now than it ever was in the past, and that this provides the motivation behind the government’s latest proposals. And that old hobby-horse of hers about drugs and drink: remember Prohibition? Organised crime has never looked back; and the War on Drugs is an equivalent disaster.

It’s not that I always disagree with her, but the relentless tone of going-to-the-dogs and moral decline is just unpleasant. This, from her previous Mail effort “D-Day for Defeatism”:

For what above all won the war for the allies was self-discipline, a willingness to sacrifice oneself for the common good. Today’s Britain, by contrast, is characterised by self-centredness and a breakdown of self-discipline. Sated by unprecedented material prosperity, this society has all but lost the concept of overcoming setbacks or hardship. It has lost its capacity for endurance.

Well, yes…there’s something I might agree with struggling to get out of that paragraph, but it’s phrased in such a shrill tone that it’s not worth bothering with.

Oh well, I’ll keep reading the Diary.

these are Chirac’s exact words.

Two facts illustrate this friendship better than anything else:

1- Chirac was the only Western Head of State who attended Hafez El Assad’s funeral in Damascus in 2000;
2- Bashar Assad’s first official European trip was to France, in June 2001

France has been replacing Russia as the main partner for the new Syrian regime. As a matter of fact, France is training Syrian university professors.

The prestigious ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration) school, which the whole French political class attends (Chirac studied there), is helping in preparing the future of the Syrian leadership. The city of Lyon picked Aleppo, the second Syrian city, as its sister city. These are just a few examples of France’s public assistance to Syria’s rogue regime.

Of course, there are other levels of cooperation that are much less publicized, especially the weapons trade and the lingering rumors of enormous financial contributions Assad made to Chirac’s reelection campaign in 2002. […]

It is then not surprising that Chirac invited Nasrallah, the leader of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, to attend the Francophone Summit in Beirut in October 2002. Hezbollah, like other terrorist networks such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to name just a few, have their headquarters in Damascus, Syria. Nasrallah, in an interview to Syrian TV in June 2002, praised Syria for “remaining a safe haven for Jihad.” Since Bashar Assad took power in 2000, Syria’s implication in and direct aid to Hezbollah has dramatically increased.

Before September 11, 2001, Hezbollah was the organization which had killed the most Americans throughout the world. To assess Hezbollah’s power and evil, let’s just quote Richard Armitage, US Deputy Secretary of State, who declared on September 5, 2002 that, “ Hezbollah may be the A-team of terrorists. While Al Qaeda may actually be the B-team.”

Hezbollah’s goals are clear and can be summed up through this Nasrallah statement in March 2003: “Death to America was, is and will stay our slogan.” What a shock, then, that when Chirac met Nasrallah, the French President said, “Hezbollah is an important component of the Lebanese society”.

Obviously, Chirac sees a major terrorist organization, whose goal is to destroy us, as a morally legitimized entity.

On a more cultural level, during that Francophone Summit, Hezbollah and France agreed on having Al Manar TV (the Hezbollah TV network) start broadcasting their terrorist propaganda in France to the French people, and in particular to the Muslim community. At the same time, on October 22, 2002 Al Manar won in France the equivalent of the Emmy for best news reporting!

So, Chirac not only rewards a terrorist-sponsoring state but also has no problems shaking hands and making deals with the A-team of terrorists. […]

France likes to find a way to kill two birds with one stone. It always supports the Muslim rogue States like Iraq, Syria and Iran, and at the same time it goes systematically against the USA. And now that Saddam is gone, Chirac has replaced him with Assad as his new best friend