"The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers," Macdonald said. "They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way."
-- from a statement by Sir Ken McDonald, Great Britain's chief prosecutor

"Fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals."

Isn't that a perfect description of the men who ran Nazi Germany, the main country with which Great Britain was at war, from September 1939 to May 1945? And were the sympathizers with Nazi Germany watched by agents, and sometimes picked up in Great Britain, and in the United States, and sometimes interned, and sometimes charged with treason, for their sympathies and their plots, and their working to undermine -- in whatever way they could -- the war effort? Not agents of the enemy but merely "members of a death cult," and not to be prosecuted by special courts or charged with treason, for their support of a mortal enemy, and though they may not be guilty of participating directly in terrorist acts, by working to aid or protect or support those who do, and working to confuse or distract or demoralize the rest of the populace. Why should they not be considered enemy agents, guilty of treason?

You don't hear that word much anymore. The very idea seems old-fashioned, in this anything-goes-world. Treason. Bring that word, bring that idea, back.

"When Iraqis rejected secular candidates and voted for a party that pledged to have sharia, at least in some forms of domestic law, the New York TImes howled that democracy could be "consigning Iraqi women to a life of subjugation." Columnist Maureen Dowd warned that "the Iraqi election may actually be making things worse" because "it is going to expand the control of the Shia theocrats." These complaints might have some plausibility if women or Sunnis were not permitted to vote. But women and men both voted for the Dawa party, and so essentially the Times and Dowd were arguing that if Iraqis don't want equal roles for men and women, their democracy is a sham." -- Dinesh D'Souza 

"Democracy" for D'Souza is mere head-counting. He does not understand what Western democracy is, what other understandings it brings with it. The idea of a representative republic, with careful checks on the vulgus mobile, and Burke's "little battalions," and solicitousness for the individual, and enshrinement of individual rights that make real, advanced Western democracies at least possible, if they are sometimes let down by their cretinized populations, and distortions in the system, but at least are free of the Total System of Islam, one that is collectivist, and that locates the legitimacy of the government not in the will expressed by the people but in the expressed will of Allah.

What a dope he is.

But on the other hand, isn't it pleasant to think that The New York Times, in now hiring as one of its "conservative columnists" the comical and deplorable William Kristol, at least has not hired, for now, the comical and deplorable Dinesh D'Souza?

Look on the bright side.

Anglo-Chinese:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG3afAIi6IQ&feature=related

"Twilight of the greats" is the title of Brian Appleyard's piece in the Sunday Times, which begins:

[2007] was a year in which a certain type of person died — Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Norman Mailer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jean Baudrillard.

Still, life goes on.

Australia celebrated with the usual magnificent displays of fireworks, over Sydney harbour, and the Yarra River in Melbourne, here in The Australian.  Record hot temperatures have been experienced in Australia this week which sounds ominous. Some displays were cancelled due to high winds.
According to the BBC men in Bangladesh (Pic 6) celebrated with midnight fishing trips, the bars having closed early by government decree "to prevent "immoral acts" .
In New Zealand police arrested hundreds of people yesterday afternoon drinking in defiance of a liquor ban.  
Officials in Belgium cancelled the traditional fireworks show in Brussels as the country went on maximum alert over possible terrorist threats.
We are promised a good display in London although I won't be there.

Not quite Sydney Harbour Bridge but my neighbours enjoyed themselves and so did the rest of the street. A Happy New Year to you all.