Charles Moore in The Spectator:

People sometimes warn against the idea that ‘man is the measure of all things’, but there is a literal sense in which he is, or should be — measurements themselves. This has been brought home very clearly to me by a short, sharp new book called About the Size of It, The Commonsense Approach to Measuring Things, by Warwick Cairns (Macmillan). The book identifies ‘the great, unwritten, unspoken unacknowledged Principle of Measurement’, which is that ‘people can’t always be bothered to do things properly’. As a result, we measure things, for daily as opposed to scientific purposes, roughly. When we do this, in almost all cultures, we use our bodies. Thus a human foot measures out a building plot; the width of a human hand, working vertically in a way human feet find difficult, measures the size of a normal brick or the height of a horse; a yard is a stick as long as your leg; a pound is about the weight you can easily hold in your hand, and so on. The only system of measurement that is hostile to these human origins is the metric one. A kilogramme of apples, for example, cannot fit in your hand. Metric is an imposition; other measurements arise from the ‘crooked timber of humanity’, and therefore work.

Metric is fine for industrial and scientific purposes, but not for everyday life. Britain has a strange mixture: food is sold in grammes and kilogrammes but people express their weight in stones. Or in gold. And who on earth gives their height in metres? I, for one wouldn't have a clue.

Decimal coinage is another matter altogether, and I have dealt conclusively - collapse of stout party - with the rose-coloured glasses that prevent tolfraedicals from seeing that, while a pound of lead or of feathers doesn't change, the pound in your pocket is a fickle, fly-by-night flibbertigibbet.

"Islam means submission to Allah in all our actions."
-- from this news article, quoting an imam

Isn't this merely standard Islam? And if it is, what is it that makes those who are willing not to "submit to Allah" in many areas, who are willing to start to think and behave and express the indignation of free men, in the non-Muslim West, to continue to call themselves "Muslims" at all? Possibly it is a matter of filial piety. Possibly the depth of the societal link is so great, and their desire to maintain an "identity" -- a name to give themselves ("I am a Muslim") so strong. Possibly they think to themselves that "I can do more good as a 'reformer' within Islam" than I can by leaving". Possibly they are simply fearful. Possibly more than one of these tugs at them.

But if all of those disaffected, Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslims, were to start openly discussing that the fact that they were no longer Muslims, had abandoned Islam as a belief-system, what would be the effect? Possibly many others, so born into Islam and also possibly wondering what to do, would be heartened by this display of numbers - of mass defections from Islam in the West, that would make it harder for non-Muslims to deny the essence of Islam.

Furthermore, if one is born into Islam, comes to the West, and begins to think for oneself, and silently defects, there is still the problem of children who think of themselves as "Muslim" and who, therefore, at a later date, may -- even if brought up in a "moderate" household -- "return to Islam." Such, for example, has been the case with some of those accused of terrorist acts in this county -- such as the boy who, raised by "moderate" Iranian exiles, in a fit of mental desarroi took up Islam again.

The only way for an advanced "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-Muslim" to ensure that his (her) own children, or their children, will never "revert" to the True-Blue Islam is to cut the cord completely, to simply declare themselves Not-Muslim, apostates, with no hesitation, and no looking back. We know the names of some famous apostates: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq. But tens of thousands in the West may be in the Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only category. By continuing to allow themselves to be counted as Muslims, they inadvertently swell the ranks of those counted as Muslims, and hence the perception of Muslim power (in other words, their mere existence as "Muslims" helps to increase the power of the very Muslims, the full-bodied kind, whom they deplore).

More of those who still think of themselves as Muslims, but deplore, when they think about it, almost everything that makes Islam Islam, should declare themselves, openly, to have left Islam, and encourage others, openly, to do the same.

"what seems to be a nasty little secret within a certain segment of the community; women are treated as second-class citizens."-- from this news article

The phrase "second class citizens" -- a phrase also used about non-Muslims in Muslim-dominated countries, -- does not convey the full scope of the mistreatment, a mistreatment that in the cases of both women and non-Muslims, does not change, or steadily diminish over time (as it did in the case of blacks in the American South after segregation in schools was ended "with all deliberate speed" and other forms of legalized discrimination declared unconstitutional, from lunch-counters to municipal swimming pools). The word "citizens" too, misleadingly implies a Muslim polity, of the kind we have in the West, of which those women and non-Muslims can be "citizens." But the very word "citizen" implies people with political autonomy, in advanced democracies, their rights enshrined in the law, their governments dependent on the expression of the will of those "citizens" in regular elections, in opinion polls, in all the activities that "citizens" of advanced democracies engage in.

Can one use the word "citizen" about Saudi Arabia? Are the people in the Sudan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan in any sense "citizens" of their respective states? Or are they more akin to subjects, pushed about, and above all, self-subjugated to the dictates of Islam, "slaves of Allah" ideally, who if they begin to act up, begin to act as if they wish to considered akin to Western "citizens" are overwhelmed by the vast primitive masses of Muslims, lead by clerics, who have on their side the texts of Islam, that those "citizens" cannot confront, deny, or wish away, and therefore the small groups of the enlightened, in Pakistan or elsewhere, will continue to fail, until one or more of three things happens.

The first is that the people in this or that Muslim state willingly submit, for a while, to an enlightened despot of the Atatruk school, someone who is strong enough to systematically constrain Islam as a political and social force, and over time to create a secular class, one large enough to permanently expand on the original despot's plans, and to defend secularism from the Rasputin-like re-appearance of the True Believers. Apparently, as the example of Turkey teaches, not even Ataturk, whose cult of personality lived on, and whose Kemalism did so much to limit the power of Islam over Turkish minds, did not do enough, or his successors did not do enough, to ensure that the erbakans and erdogans -- who want Islam back, back in all the places from which the Kemalists had banned it -- would not re-appear, and succeed, as they have been.

The second is that an outside power force changes upon them, as the Soviet Union did, when it, in many places successfully, managed to smash Islam (as it smashed other religions) in Central Asia, and raised up several generations of people who were not inclined to return to Islam, even if they shared the general resentment at Soviet power. The Islamic movements in several of the five stans, have so far been crushed, in some cases using methods no Western state would dare to use.

The third is that the Western powers, unable to put pressure of the kind the European powers did on the Ottomans so that they would change the legal mistreatment of the rayas, or communities of non-Muslims, under Ottoman rule, will do something else: show, again and again, that Islam is the cause of the failures of Islamic states and societies. Instead of trying to rescue or aid Muslim peoples, with huge infusions of Infidel money, aid that quickly becomes impossible to end (for fear of "offending" the donors) and that the Muslim recipients quickly regard as theirs by right, which is pocketed, and pocketed, but for which no real or lasting gratitude is felt)--in other words, the aid becomes Jizyah -- the West should insist that the aid for poor Muslims should come from the fabulously rich Muslim oil states, with their tiny populations, and their trillions of dollars, with which they are now buying up large stakes all over the Western world, not least in media companies.

Any one or more than one of these might help create, as in Turkey, "citizens" rather than subjects. But for now, the phrase "second-class citizens" misleads in two ways. The word "citizen" does not describe the reality of the Muslim in a Muslim nation-state, but conveys a false idea of the Muslim polity. And the phrase "second-class citizen" does not adequately convey the mistreatment, deep, systematic and permanent, of women and, especially, of non-Muslims in a state where Islam dominates and Muslims rule.

And in what sense can a woman living in Mississisauga, Canada be a "second-class citizen" of the Canadian state? She is not. But she is subject to a state within the state, one that inflicts, even if it is not the law of the land, all of the cruelties of the Shari'a, of the texts, and the tenets, and the attitudes, and the atmospherics, of Islam, that are carried about by Muslims who take their Islam seriously in their mental baggage, wherever they go, whatever the particular passport they acquire. That "virtual state" exists wherever Believers exist. Sometimes they act on the dictates of that virtual state; sometimes, they prudently do not. But even if they do not, that may merely reflect their desire to stay deep within Infidel lands, to protect their own position, and to practice as much taqiyya-and-tu-quoque, to keep up a steady fog-machine of distraction and confusion, and not for a month but for years and years, until their numbers swell, and their power grows, until it is too late, or so it may seem, for Infidels to protect themselves and their legal and political institutions adequately. It is an amazing feat, one would have said an impossible feat, save for the willingness, as we have seen, of so many in the Western world to remain willfully ignorant and to participate in their own long-term bamboozlement and, alas, destruction.

"it’s high time to take ownership and confront the elephant in the room. Those of us who are Catholics were made to feel guilt by association over the scandal of some brothers abusing young boys, even when the vast majority of priests were exemplary models of their calling. The Church had to deal with it. Now it’s your turn. Denial is not an option."
-- from a reader

Catholic priests who molested altar boys were not following the teachings of Christianity. Those Muslims who teach that women must be submissive, must wear certain clothing for example, if told that the Shari'a or their menfolk demand it, and who are perfectly willing to mete out punishment themselves to a woman who disobeys -- imagine what happens in Saudi Arbia, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan in those places where the Infidels are not in control, to women who fail to wear the burqa or its equivalent -- can and do find their justification in the texts, and the interstices of the texts, of Islam.

That is a big difference. In the case of sexual molestation by, at most, a few hundred Catholic priests, no textual authority exists, not a text or a tenet, in Christianity, to justify what those priests did. In the case of Islam, there is considerable textual authority, for the punishment of a disobedient woman, who fails to observe the injunction to dress "modestly" and for men to be the sole arbiters of what, in women's dress, is to be demanded, and what prohibited. The texts, tenets, attitudes of Islam all support those who would inflict punishment on a disobedient female, whether 16 or 60. In a Muslim-dominated country, we already know what would happen to a man who killed his daughter for such a reason, and we know why.

Canada, fortunately, is not yet a Muslim-dominated country.

Theodore Dalrymple is quite wrong about goose. See how wrong he is:

Unlike Wagner’s music, which is better than it sounds, roast goose is less good than it sounds. For a reason that I have not been able quite to fathom, it is really delicious only in Germany. Or so I, at any rate, have found.

Whether this is because the Germans cook it better, or whether it is because it is a dish that is appropriate to the country, I am not sure. Perhaps you need to be near dense and dark pine forests, with clearings for witches and wicked stepmothers who either devour small children or send them out to find strawberries in the snow, to appreciate the comforts of roast goose.

Yet such is the theoretical allure of this bird that for a number of years I have been reluctant to contemplate the roasting of any other for our traditional and compulsive (if not compulsory) Christmas overindulgence. After all, the connotation of the word turkey, that is to say of dismal failure, seems to me to be entirely appropriate. Roast turkey is to cuisine what chipboard is to Chippendale. But roast goose was still a deceiver ever.

[...]

However, I disregard these sceptical and dissenting thoughts each year, putting them to the back of my mind, which oddly enough feels as though it really is located at the back of my head, somewhere in my occipital lobe. I take no notice of the small, mocking voice that worms its way forward and tells me it, the goose, will be no good, it will be dry and stringy despite all the fat it exudes, and that duck or even chicken would have been better.

Read the rest - it's even more wrong. Goose is delicious. You're just not cooking it properly.

"Citing the Koran, Elsayed said it is forbidden to hit anyone, adding that taking away a human life is an act against all humanity. 'No religion condones such an act,' he said."
-- from this article

How long does Sheikh Alaa Elsayed think he can continue with this nonsense and lies? How long does he think it will be before non-Muslims actually take a look at 9.5 and 9.29 and another hundred verses, all about slaying of the Infidels? Does he think he can play this game for another thirty years? Ten? Five? One? How long before the Hadith are looked into by inquiring non-Muslims? How long before the books of Karen Armstrong are held up for ridicule, and other books, including those by Robert Spencer, are no longer easily dismissable as "right-wing" but as something else: perfectly accurate guides to the contents of Qu'ran, Hadith, Sira?

Does Alaa Elsayed think that Lying Blatant is better than Lying Indirect, or that Lying Indirect is better than telling the truth, when the truth is but a single mouse-click away? It is easy to find the Qur'an, many different translations laid out synoptically for easy comparison. It is easy to find the most "authentic" Hadith. It is easy to find the sites of knowledgeable ex-Muslims -- for example, those at www.faithfreedom.org -- and eventually the elsayeds of this world will be seen for what they are, those conducting Jihad through propaganda, aiming for the same goal -- to ensure that everywhere all barriers to the spread, and then to the dominance, of Islam, throughout the world, are removed. The only difference is that Alaa Elsayed, for now, cannot employ certain methods,and chooses the more effective one of propaganda -- nonsense and lies -- to further the Cause of Islam, though employing different methods, from those who would, or do, set off bombs.

Eurekalert: Renewable does not mean green. That is the claim of Jesse Ausubel of the Rockefeller University in New York. Writing in Inderscience's International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, Ausubel explains that building enough wind farms, damming enough rivers, and growing enough biomass to meet global energy demands will wreck the environment.

Ausubel has analyzed the amount of energy that each so-called renewable source can produce in terms of Watts of power output per square meter of land disturbed. He also compares the destruction of nature by renewables with the demand for space of nuclear power. "Nuclear energy is green," he claims, "Considered in Watts per square meter, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors."

On this basis, he argues that technologies succeed when economies of scale form part of their evolution. No economies of scale benefit renewables. More renewable kilowatts require more land in a constant or even worsening ratio, because land good for wind, hydropower, biomass, or solar power may get used first.

A consideration of each so-called renewable in turn, paints a grim picture of the environmental impact of renewables. Hypothetically flooding the entire province of Ontario, Canada, about 900,000 square km, with its entire 680,000 billion liters of rainfall, and storing it behind a 60 meter dam would only generate 80% of the total power output of Canada's 25 nuclear power stations, he explains. Put another way, each square kilometer of dammed land would provide the electricity for just 12 Canadians.

Biomass energy is also horribly inefficient and destructive of nature. To power a large proportion of the USA, vast areas would need to be shaved or harvested annually. To obtain the same electricity from biomass as from a single nuclear power plant would require 2500 square kilometers of prime Iowa land. "Increased use of biomass fuel in any form is criminal," remarks Ausubel. "Humans must spare land for nature. Every automobile would require a pasture of 1-2 hectares."

Turning to wind Ausubel points out that while wind farms are between three to ten times more compact than a biomass farm, a 770 square kilometer area is needed to produce as much energy as one 1000 Megawatt electric (MWe) nuclear plant. To meet 2005 US electricity demand and assuming round-the-clock wind at the right speed, an area the size of Texas, approximately 780,000 square kilometers, would need to be covered with structures to extract, store, and transport the energy.

One hundred windy square meters, a good size for a Manhattan apartment, could power an electric lamp or two, but not the laundry equipment, microwave oven, plasma TV, and computer. New York City would require every square meter of Connecticut to become a wind farm to fully power all its electrical equipment and gadgets...

Presidential libraries provide under-the-radar influence buying. The funds are assumed to come in well after the President leaves office, but the pledges come in well before.

WaPo: Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia, according to interviews yesterday.

The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, according to people directly familiar with the contributions...

Sweden's equivalent to the FBI, the Swedish security police (SÄPO), have announced they are looking into this case because the attack could have a political motive. SÄPO noted that Mr. Fuat Deniz dedicated much of his research to Assyrian identity and the Turkish genocide of Assyrians. His masters thesis, A Minority's Odyssey: the Assyrian Example, was praised for its way of describing developments in social identities among Assyrians...

In France, the government simply went ahead, and built nuclear power plants that now supply 80% of France's electricity. The plants were cookie-cutter in and by design, for they were built by a single owner, operator, insuror: the government. In the United States, the exaggerated terror -- whipped up by demagogues -- over the Three Mile Island accident (that killed no one), and the Chernobyl accident (that killed some, and was responsible for killing many more). Chernoyl was built by the Soviet government, to standards of safety that no Western country would have permitted.

When each reactor in this country nad a different design, built by a different owner, and requiring endless political discussion not by the informed but by the entire electorate, then nuclear plants are not built. They should be, starting now if not thirty years ago, and built by a single owner, the government, that could re-use a very few designs, rather than be inhibited by free-market fundamentalists who should be thinking of this as a war-effort, not as an economic activity, the war of self-defense against the Jihad, and the war to preserve, from the ravages of greed and the new impoverished definitions of "happiness," the earth, in something like a reasonable, possibly even still attractive, shape.

(Thanks to Jefffrey Imm) Kirkuk (AsiaNews) – Yesterday in Kirkuk Iraqi police captured the remaining members of a gang specialised in kidnapping Christian doctors. The criminal organisation was made up of 4 brothers, arrested in various raids between December 11th and 13th.  Two unemployed relatives aided the brothers.  All of the gang members have confessed to the crime.  They are Muslims who have no connection to terrorist organisations, or Islamic extremism.  They, themselves confessed that they chose the kidnapping industry to “make easy money, what’s more according to sharia taking money from a Christian is legitimate”.  The group had a complete list of doctors and pharmacists, possible future targets.

The Chaldean Archdiocese’ excellent relations with other civil and religious authorities in Kirkuk greatly contributed to the capture.  Committed to protecting the community, Church leaders frequently visit and meet with political parties, government authorities, Imam’s, Sheiks and police and National Guard commanders.

The medical profession has long been a target for terrorists and criminals throughout Iraq.  Recently in Kirkuk 4 specialised doctors have been kidnapped.  Their families were forced to pay extortionate sums for their release, amounting to thousands of dollars.  Under increased pressure from constant threats 3 doctors had already left the city in the last few weeks heading for the safer climate of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Just this week in Baghdad unknown assailants killed the director of the psychiatric hospital 'al-Rashad', the nation’s most important clinic for mental health problems.  These increasing attacks on the medical profession have forced numerous leading doctors and specialists as well as simple GP’s to leave Iraq, thus depriving the nation of their vital talents.  In Mosul, for example, threats to male Gynaecologists, who are virtually extinct, have resulted in pregnant women being unable to find medical assistance for child birth.

The following song was written by Tex Logan, one of the all-time great bluegrass fiddle players. During his career he played with Bill Monroe, the Lilly Brothers, and Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper. He was also interested in electrical engineering and attended graduate school at MIT and later worked for Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the communications theory department -- far from bluegrass country. This is Bill Monroe's 1951 recording of Logan's Christmas hit song.

CHRISTMAS TIME'S A-COMING

Michael Coren responds to all the "this has nothing to do with Islam" articles that have sprung up like weeds around the Aqsa Parvez case in Canada:

It's the episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie that I missed. The one where the father is so angry with his teenage daughter for not wearing the hijab that he strangles her to death. Perhaps it will be in the special features section of the DVD version, released just in time for the holiday that used to be known as Christmas, but not any longer because the word might hurt someone's feelings.

Not that we know why, or even if Muhammad Parvez killed his 16-year-old daughter Aqsa last week in Mississauga, Ont. But we do know that he has been charged with the crime and that friends told reporters there had been terrible arguments about Aqsa's refusal to wear Islamic head covering and that she wanted a different path from that of her family.

Most Canadian Muslim leaders immediately condemned what had happened but it didn't take very long for the usual suspects to explain on radio and television that the tragedy had nothing to do with the Muslim faith and that all religions contain extremism. Islam, we were told, is a religion of peace.

Which is probably just what the owner of a Christian bookstore in Gaza thought three months ago as he was murdered and his shop firebombed. Or Danny Pearl, shortly before the American journalist had his head cut off by Islamic terrorists -- who, naturally, filmed the whole thing and made sure their chants from the Koran were loud and clear.

Or the wretched gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia sentenced to 200 lashes for daring to be in a car at the time of the crime with a man to whom she was not married or related. Or the women stoned to death for adultery. Or the Iranian men hanged because they were homosexual.

Or the women who lived and died under the Taliban. Or the Christians persecuted and killed in Pakistan, Egypt and Sudan.

Or the young women in France, Britain and all over Europe killed by fathers and brothers for leaving Islam, dressing like other girls or dating non Muslims.

Or the teacher who allowed a student to name a teddy bear Muhammad, or Salman Rushdie's translator whose throat was cut from ear to ear, or movie director Theo Van Gogh who was slaughtered like an animal in the middle of a Dutch street.

And on and on. On until the denial is sickening. It's cultural, it's because of colonialism, it's because of Palestine, because of Iraq, because of misunderstanding. Because of anything other than Islam.

Only a bigot would argue that every Muslim was violent or opposed to Western freedom. But only a coward or a liar would argue that there was not a profound and deeply worrying link between conservative Islam and myriad acts of terror, intolerance and hysterical anger.

It is not I who say this but the countless Muslims who take to the streets at the drop of a cartoon to scream for blood and war; or the Muslims who preach jihad in North America and Europe, where they enjoy open societies founded on Christian enlightenment.

They may represent a minority, but the harm they do is incalculable. This dysfunctional venom does not come from Christian, Jew, Hindu or Buddhist and fatuous relativism will only blind the foolish. It is time for free discussion in this free country, whether it offends or not.

Another heart-warming story from the wonderful world of Islam.

CAIRO, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- An Egyptian man has been charged with fatally stabbing his wife on their wedding night when he decided she was not a virgin.

Ibrahim Ali and Hoda Salem were married in the village of Al-Quba in the Nile Delta. On their wedding night, residents heard Salem screaming and found her on the floor, al-Arabiya reported.

Salem said that her husband had stabbed her. She died at the hospital.

Ali, after his arrest, said that he was unable to break his wife's hymen on the wedding night, leading him to conclude that she was sexually experienced, the report said.

In a similar recent case, an autopsy found that the bride was a virgin. Gynecologist Naglaa Ahmed said that in many cases new husbands are unable to break the hymen on the wedding night because of nervousness. In other cases, women have unusually tough hymens, requiring surgical intervention.

I was blessed to know Mr. Monroe when he was an old man in the 1990's. This is a live video recording from 1956.

Uncle Pen

The lyrics are a bit hard to understand so here they are:

Oh, the people would come from far away,
To dance all night to the break of day.
When the caller would holler: "Do Si Do",
They knew Uncle Pen was ready to go.

Late in the evening, about sundown,
High on the hill, an' above the town,
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lordy, how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing!
Instrumental break.

Well, he played an old tune they called the "Soldier's Joy",
And he played the one they called the "Boston Boy".
Greatest of all was the "Jennie Lynn",
To me, that's where the fiddlin' begins.

Late in the evening, about sundown,
High on the hill, an' above the town,
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lordy, how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing!
Instrumental break.

I'll never forget that mournful day
When old Uncle Pen was called away,
He hung up his fiddle and he hung up his bow,
And he knew it was time for him to go.

Late in the evening, about sundown,
High on the hill, an' above the town,
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lordy, how it would ring.
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing!
Instrumental break.

Late in the evening, about sundown,
High on the hill, an' above the town,
Uncle Pen played the fiddle, Lordy, how it would ring,
You could hear it talk, you could hear it sing!

This article says that the donors to Clinton's library "include Saudi businessmen Abdullah al-Dabbagh, Nasser al-Rashid and Walid Juffali, as well as Issam Fares, a U.S. citizen who previously served as deputy prime minister of Lebanon."

Issam Fares? you may, or should ask.

Issam Fares is the endower of the modestly-titled Issam Fares Lecture Series at Tufts, a businessman of doubtful respectability (but his money is respectable, and respectfully has Tufts, or rather the Fletcher School, accepted it).  The Fares Lectures offer, the largest honorarium, one is told, of any lecture series in the United States. Who gets that honorarium, one hundred thousand or so, for 40 minutes of vaporings that you, or I, or almost any adult, could make up in two minutes? Well, it's the Great and the Good. The usual Great and Good, who need a little reward for all they have, or will do, in the  forming and utterance of their sentiments about such things as "Islam" and "conflict in the Middle East." Colin Powell. Madeline Albright. George Bush, Senior. And, greediest of all, that compulsive grasper and cheat and charmer, Bill Clinton. He's made tens of millions since getting out of office. Now he's on to his Clinton World Initiative, or whatever he calls it, that allows him to gather together the most unwary billionaires, for a mutual-appreciation society of donors, some of whom are undoubtedly going to be donating to the cynosure of all eyes, glad-handing William Jefferson Clinton.

But back to the original question "Who is Issam Fares?" That's who.