Robert Crampton writes in The Times:

The expression of the moment, is it not, is “gone off a cliff”. House prices have gone off a cliff. Confidence and consumer spending have gone off a cliff, even though retail and commodity prices have gone off a cliff, meaning profits, recruitment and share prices have gone off a cliff (although share prices just climbed a little way back up the cliff).

[…]

Has anything, I wonder, merely rolled sedately down a gentle slope in the past month? Or even pottered along the flat, suffering no abrupt change in gradient at all?

Americans are, as always, ahead of the curve. Over there, things don’t go off a cliff; they get thrown under a bus.

"Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral," quips Hugh. Not that you can really "quip" in German. German doesn't lend itself to puns and other jokes, except in one important respect: the position of the verb at the end of a subordinate clause allows for amusing repetition, as in this, by Heinrich Seidel (h/t Paul):

AN EVELINE

Motto:
Wohl kann ich dich zum Schokoladenladen laden,
Doch nicht mit dir in Baden-Baden baden.

Ich kann dir nicht, was andre schenken, schenken
Und nicht die Welt aus den Gelenken lenken.
Du darfst dich nicht auf Schmuck und Spitzen spitzen,
Wirst nicht mit mir auf goldnen Sitzen sitzen,

Jedoch, der ich des Dichters Habe habe,
Vermag es, dass dich andre Labe labe:
Schon fühl ich es von Liederkeimen keimen,
Ich will sie dir in goldnen Reimen reimen,

Dass dir gar lieblich ihr Getöne töne,
Und dich der Verse Schmuck verschöne, Schöne

It peters out a bit towards the end, but it can still knock Anthony Burgess' contrived and unfunny "onions onions onions" into a cocked hat. Tastes sweeter, too.

I had received this press release, "Texas Terrorism Trial Ties Boston mosque leaders to Extremist Network," from Dennis Hale, a Boston College professor and President of Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT). The CPT was one of several groups sued in the aborted Islamic Society of Boston matter, a subject that I had written about frequently over the past nearly four years.

• "Hossam Al Jabri, President of the Muslim American Society's Boston branch (MAS Boston), which now controls the ISB Cultural Center, personally donated money to the HLF while they were sending funds to Hamas," Hale said. "And the Islamic Society of Boston as an organization sent thousands of dollars to the HLF as well."
• "Jamal Badawi, an ISB Trustee, was a frequent speaker at HLF fundraising events, and was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF prosecution."
• "Osama Kandil, the ISB Board Chairman, founded the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA), which provided venues for HLF fundraising events where Hamas members made explicit calls to murder Israelis." For its role in Hamas fundraising, MAYA was also listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial.

This New Duranty report is surprisingly frank because it quotes the judge directly:

BERLIN — One of the two men behind a failed terrorist attack on commuter trains here received a life sentence from a German court on Tuesday.

The man, Youssef Muhammad el-Hajdib, was convicted on multiple counts of attempted murder for leaving two suitcase bombs on the trains in Cologne in July 2006, which failed to explode. The unsuccessful attack, reminiscent of the train bombing that killed 191 people in Madrid in 2004, deeply rattled Germany, which had just finished hosting some two million visitors for the World Cup soccer tournament.

Mr. Hajdib, 24, and his lawyers argued that the propane gas devices were never meant to explode and that the attack was staged to incite fear.

The regional superior court in Düsseldorf agreed instead with prosecutors that Germany “never stood closer to an Islamist attack.”

“The fact that it did not result in a devastating bloodbath with a multitude of dead was only thanks to a construction error by the culprit and his accomplice in building the detonation devices,” said Ottmar Breidling, the presiding judge in the case. “It was their explicit aim to kill as many nonbelievers as possible.”

Germany has not suffered a successful Islamist terrorist attack, as Britain, Spain and the United States have, but security officials say there have been several narrow misses. The Sept. 11 attacks were planned and organized in part in Hamburg.

The police found the two unexploded suitcase bombs on trains in Dortmund and Koblenz. Mr. Hajdib was arrested in Kiel several weeks later, after the police released video from surveillance cameras showing Mr. Hajdib and his accomplice, Jihad Hamad, boarding trains with large suitcases at a Cologne train station.

German officials credited Lebanon’s military intelligence agency for intercepting a panicked phone call Mr. Hajdib made to his family after the video of him was broadcast here. Mr. Hamad surrendered to the police in Tripoli.

A Lebanese court convicted Mr. Hamad last year and sentenced him to 12 years in prison for the failed bombing. The two men were motivated in part by anger over the publication in 2005 of cartoons in Denmark depicting the Prophet Muhammad, according to an investigator in the case.

The American expression "throw under a bus", about which I was until now a little numb and vague.

"Only a ghastly, dehumanised moron would get rid of the Routemaster," said former London Mayor Ken Livingstone. But he didn't keep his promise. He threw the Routemaster under a bus.

Yes, yes, I know this bus-throwing business is supposed to happen to people, not things, but the Routemaster is a living thing to most Londoners, and I'm very pleased that Red Ken has now gone off a cliff.

Bear in mind that once someone has been thrown under a bus, his price goes off a cliff, and it is harder to sell him down the river.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsK9jmcW4I4&feature=related

Mary Jackson observes  that the phrase "fall off a cliff" in England has, as its equivalent in America,  "thrown under a bus" in America.

Not exactly.

Prices, things that can be quantified, apparently fall off a cliff, possibly even the celebrated white cliffs of Dover, with great frequency, and most fashionably, in England.

You are right that in America,  prices of housing or stocks or goods or services of any kind, are said to "crater" or "collapse" though they may also -- apparently not as oftten as in England -- continue to "fall off a cliff." But prices of housing, stocks, etcetera are not, as you imply,  "thrown under a bus." People are "thrown under a bus." When you make a sacrifice of someone else, treat that person as disposable and then, for your own ends, do so dispose, you are said to "throw that person under the bus." In the echo-chamber of newspapers and the radio and television, iBarack Obama is said to have thrown over a number of previous acqaintances. He threw Anton Reszko "under the bus" once Rezko was arrested. He  then threw Reverend Wright "under the bus" once those famous tapes appeared. And so, in politics, in business, do many others throw many other others, "under the bus."  McCain's advisers were said to be furious with Palin, even ready to "throw her under the bus." 

Prices and people meet, in the metaphor-employing mind, when those people work at a  firm, a company, a corporation. Ruthless executives may indeed throw their workers "under a bus" by stripping them of benefits, or even of jobs. Or a certain executive may be "thrown under a bus" by his fellow executives. And, by extension, that company, or that group of similar companies, may be thrown under a bus. E.g.: , "House Republicans seem prepared to throw the car companies under the bus" or "Will voters throw Detroit under the bus?"  or "Should Paulson have thrown Lehman Brothers under the bus?"

In summary, save as modified above, the general rule remains this: 

Prices, quantifiable (Mind Your Ps and Qs), in England often "fall off a cliff." 

People, qualifiable (Don't Stop  Minding Those Ps and Those Qs), when they become, in the calculation of others more powerful, people whose qualities can do harm to the interests of that powerful calculator,  are in America often  "thrown under a bus." Sometimes those people are so linked to companies or industries that those companies or industries are also "thrown under a bus."

Prices "fall off a cliff" inexorably, and do not require human will. But when people (or the companies or industries they work for) are "thrown under a bus" there is nothing inexorable about it -- there is an element of human sacrifice, and we are back at the Temple of the Jaguar, in the merciless sun of Teotihuacan.

That bus, if it does not go over a cliff, will continue to run over all kinds of people thrown under it in present-day America, and elsewhere too, in this onrushing Century of Sauve-Qui-Peut. And in such metaphoric fashion, and disturbingly thus, it will return to its origins, that homely bus, and become, not a carry-all, but a crush-all, omnibus.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogdeQzOqDqw

The current edition of The Economist  has a dhimmi article on compromise with local Islamic groups throughout major cities in Europe  What is most disturbing is the patent castigation of Vlaams Belang, the nationalist party in Belgium vis a vis its positions in Flanders in opposition to Muslim demands. There are denigrating comments regarding last year's anti-Jihad conference in Brussels.  Then there are the local attempts in Belgium to maintain communal abattoirs to replace the home slaughter of sheep for the upcoming Islamic "holiday" of Eid al-Adha . The other impression is that major Dutch cities, especially Rotterdam, home of the late assassinated Pym Fortune, with a sizable Muslim minority, has compromised on his legacy. A Muslim Mayor is about to take over the municipality in January, 2009. There are other examples like Duisburg, Germany with publicly funded local Mosque building for the predominately Turkish émigré Muslim communities in the Ruhr coal and steel belt. In Lyon, France there is the compromise over halal foods offered by the municipal school system-they offer the alternative of vegetarian fare so as not to 'compromise' traditional secular values.  Over  in Londonistan, you have the Muslim "no go" areas railed against by Pakistani born Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali.  Then you have U,K. municipal cemeteries positioning grave sites towards Mecca. Then you have sex segregated swimming in municipal pools. All this reads like capitulation to Sharia in Eurabia. To cap things off The Economist has an insert story on the largest Muslim cities in America, Hamtramck and Dearborn, Michigan. The former was once the "Polish capital of America"-not any more.  There are over 350,000 Muslims in the Detroit area, dominating public charter schools with Islamic practices, all funded by the taxpayers. Shades of charter schools in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Columbus, Ohio.  The Economist piece amounts to a series of tropes on unending compromise of Western values at the municipal level throughout Europe and even in major concentrated Muslim areas here in America and likely Canada, as well.

Visit any contemporary art section of any gallery and one comes away with the slightly queasy feeling of having been had. Most of it is ugly and disturbing - only the price tags are to be marveled at. The following article by Ben Lewis and Jonathan Ford indicates the gig may finally be up (hat tip: Arts and Letters):

The bubble in contemporary art is about to pop. It has exhibited all the classic features of the South Sea bubble of 1720 or the tulip madness of the 1630s. It has been the bubble of bubbles—balancing precariously on top of other now-burst bubbles in credit, housing and commodities—and inflating more dramatically than all of them. While British house prices took six years to double at the start of this century, contemporary art managed it in just one, 2006-07. (Over the same period, old masters went up by just 7.6 per cent and British 17th to 19th century watercolours actually lost value.) Contemporary art in the emerging economies did even better. The value of its sales in China increased by 983 per cent in one year (2005-06). In Russia they rose 2,365 per cent in five years (2000-05), while its stock market increased by "only" about 300 per cent.

Even these numbers understate the incredible tulip-like increases in the value of the hottest artists. The Chinese painter Zhang Xiaogang saw his work appreciate 6,000 times, from $1,000 to $6m (1999-2008); work by the American artist Richard Prince went up 60 to 80 times (2003-2008). The German painter Anselm Reyle was unknown in 2003; you could have picked up one of his stripe paintings for €14,000. Now he has a studio with 60 assistants turning them out for about €200,000 each. Any figures for the whole contemporary art market are guesswork, though Christie's chief executive, Ed Dolman, recently estimated that it had grown in value from $4bn a year to somewhere between $20-30bn in the past eight years.

But this bubble is now deflating. Sotheby's share price has lost three quarters of its value over the past year, sinking from its peak of $57 in October 2007 to $9 in early November—close to its 1980s low of $8. The latest round of contemporary art auctions in London has gone badly. In October, the Phillips de Pury sale made only £5m—a quarter of the minimum estimate; at Christie's almost half the lots didn't sell; and an air of denial hung over the Frieze art fair like a fog. Upmarket dealers Matthew Marks and Iwan Wirth claimed to have clinched many big deals, but the reality was surely different. A leading New York gallerist was said to have sold very little and a well-known German dealer not a single work.

Some dealers have blamed the poor quality of the works in the London sales. "Just wait for New York in mid-November," one said, "and you'll see the art market is still doing well." But New York has been no better. This should have come as no real surprise. If you consider the market as a purely financial enterprise, rather than one in which aesthetic quality has any bearing, then the boom in contemporary art has the hallmarks of a classic investment bubble.

In his book, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Charles Kindleberger observed that manias typically start with a "displacement" that excites speculative interest. It may come from a new object of investment or from the increased profitability of existing investments. It is followed by positive feedback as rising prices encourage less experienced investors to enter the market. Then, as the mania gets a grip, speculation becomes more diffuse and spreads to other types of asset. Fresh assets are created at an ever faster rate to take advantage of the euphoria and investors try to increase their gains by borrowing to buy assets or using derivatives. Credit ultimately becomes overextended, swindling and fraud proliferate, and the mania ends in panic as investors seek to liquidate their positions.

The art market has adhered spookily to Kindleberger's model. By 2004 it was clear that a boom in contemporary art was well underway ("The price of art," Ben Lewis, Prospect, October 2004.) At the Armory show, New York's trendsetting contemporary art fair, dealers sold $43m worth of art in four days, nearly twice as much as the previous year. There were huge price rises at auction, too. A 1996 sculpture of a stuffed horse hanging from a ceiling, Ballad of Trotsky, by the fashionable and witty Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, sold for $2m at auction in May 2002. It had increased in value tenfold in two years. Gerhard Richter's paintings quadrupled in value between 2000 and 2004. Even then, buyers were paying $1m to $3m for a work by Hirst, Warhol, Basquiat or Koons. Those sums now seem quaint—last year a Koons went for $23m, a Hirst for $20m and a Basquiat for $15m.

The moment of "displacement" was driven by the emergence of a global class of the new rich. These billionaires, who had probably never drawn more than stick figures with a biro, were drawn to artistic creation. They wanted to collect contemporary art, partly because they liked it, partly because it was a status symbol, partly because most of the good old master works were in museums, and partly because it seemed to be a solid investment....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NfDuDh0Uc

From Rochdale on line.
Muslim children in Rochdale are being beaten and abused regularly by teachers who want to “discipline” them into learning the Koran, it has been revealed.
Young children have been punched and slapped according to a shocking report carried out by a Rochdale Imam and religious education teacher. 
Imam Chishti claims the beatings have taken place as a result of a lack of communication between non-English speaking teachers in Madrassas; classes dedicated to teaching about the Koran.
Some children have been so severely abused that they have needed medical attention. Rochdale Police has been working alongside Rochdale Council, including social services, for “months” to deal with what was a secret but ongoing problem in local Mosques.
Rochdale Council has met with madrassa leaders six times this year to discuss the issues.
A spokesman said: “The safety of young people in the borough is our number one priority and we take all reports of abuse against children very seriously indeed. 
A case study from The Times
When Salma's name was called out by her madrassa teacher during Koran class, it was often only a matter of seconds before she felt a stinging pain on her back, her buttocks, or her palms.
At times she'd frown and put on a brave face when her teacher laid into her with a cane for mispronouncing Arabic words or forgetting a verse. But in most cases the staged bravery would give way to tears.
After the punishment, Salma, then 12, would join her dozen or so female friends, who would be seated in a circle in their Asian teacher's living room - which doubled as a madrassa on weekday nights - awaiting their own name to be called.
She admitted that the girls got away lightly compared with boys, even though at times they also got their “ears twisted” before or after the caning.
“The boys always got more severe hits than the girls,” she said. “My little brother hated going to school because of that.”
Just as painful as the throbbing red marks left on Salma's skin by her teacher was her mother's refusal to do anything about them. “Mum would say, 'You deserve it for not learning or for misbehaving',” she said.

"passing judgment on others is the worst thing you could do to yourself."
                             -- note from a reader

Don't be an idiot. Failing to pass judgment is one of the worst things anyone can do. We are not all equal, not in our opinions, not in our knowledge, not in our innate abilities. Why shouldn't one "pass judgement" for god's sake? It is done all the time. About party platforms. About party platters. About party favors. About parties of the first part and parties of the second. I judge, I pass judgements ("both are correct" as the dying French grammarian said) all the time. I am most judgmental. I now pass judgment on the reader who sent me that phrase with which I began. I have weighed her, and found her wanting.

From The Telegraph
Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary has branded Christmas "evil" in a sermon posted on the internet.
The lawyer, who recently praised the Mumbai terror attacks, urged all Muslims to reject traditional Christmas celebrations, claiming that they are forbidden by Allah.
The 41-year-old shocked Christians and even those of his own faith by branding yuletide festivities as "the pathway to hellfire".
Choudary, who is chairman of the Society of Muslim Lawyers, ruled out all celebrations, including having a Christmas tree, decorating the house or eating turkey.
In the sermon posted on an Islamic website, he said: "In the world today many Muslims, especially those residing in western countries, are exposed to the evil celebration Christmas.
"Many take part in the festival celebrations by having Christmas turkey dinners.
"Decorating the house, purchasing Christmas trees or having Christmas turkey meals are completely prohibited by Allah.
"Many still practise this corrupt celebration as a remembrance of the birth of Jesus.
"How can a Muslim possibly approve or participate in such a practice that bases itself on the notion Allah has an offspring?
"The very concept of Christmas contradicts and conflicts with the foundation of Islam.
"Every Muslim has a responsibility to protect his family from the misguidance of Christmas, because its observance will lead to hellfire. Protect your Paradise from being taken away – protect yourself and your family from Christmas."

From The Sydney Morning Herald

A government Muslim affairs adviser lied to her drug dealer to hide her use of cocaine during the religious period of Ramadan, a Sydney court has been told.

As well as being a member of former prime minister John Howard's Muslim Community Reference Group, Iktimal Hage-Ali was named NSW Young Australian of the Year in 2006.

The now 24-year-old was arrested eight days before she was awarded the title and her recorded interview with police, on November 22, was played in the NSW District Court on Wednesday.
Ms Hage-Ali, who worked for the NSW Attorney-General's Department at the time but now lives in Dubai, was released without charge after telling police she had bought cocaine for her own use only.

She told police of buying cocaine from her dealer, childhood friend Mohammed "Bruce" Fahda, who was arrested the same day and has since been jailed.

Secretly recorded tapes of their phone calls were played to the court, during which they used a code, calling a gram of cocaine a "dress" and its price, or payment, as "notes".

Some of the calls were made from her work at the Attorney-General's Department and in some calls she commented on the quality of particular deals.There were times during Ramadan when I still wanted to have cocaine but I didn't want him to know I was using during Ramadan," she said in the interview.

Muslim adults are meant to refrain from eating and drinking between dawn and sunset during the month of Ramadan.

Ms Hage-Ali said during that period, she told her dealer she had a friend who wanted a sample.
"All the times I have referred to a friend, it was really just for me," she said.

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there -
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They'd sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.
 
We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
'The time draws near the birth of Christ'.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger

 Conclusion of Advent 1955 by John Betjeman

Immigration and the vulnerability of democracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRNdp24umro&feature=related