On the third anniversary of the 7/7 London Bombings, Peter Oborne investigates whether these attacks and the fear of terrorism has fuelled the rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims.

• I used to think that all kitty litter was created equal.  How wrong I was! Undoubtedly, the worst part of having a cat is the litter box. No matter how clean it looks, it's just gross.  So a very enthusiastic cat enthusiast at Target begged me to try Feline Pine litter. It looks like sawdust.  My thoughts then were, "Yeah right!" That is until I got Lucy home and settled and soon realized that I detested the grainy, dusty, foul smelling litter that got all over my bathroom floor no matter what i did. So the crazy cat lady was right.  Not only is the FP better for the environment (and flushable, folks!) it doesn't smell to high heaven and my floor has been clean!  Whoo hoo!
• My son suddenly thinks that he is a "big boy" which means he has taken it upon himself to help himself to whatever, whenever.  Ugh.  He'll be 4 in just two short months, and this behavior has gotten progressively worse over the past 2 weeks.  For example - while I was in the shower earlier this week, he decided to pick up my cell phone and call Jason.  Just to talk.  Funny, and a little scary too!  Then, I put him in his room for some other infraction and when I went upstairs to check on him, he was attempting to use the PC!  Grrrrrr.  Later that same day I sat him down to watch some PBS while I did some laundry.  I came downstairs to find him eating 5 pieces of cheese.  Alas, his bowels have not moved since.  Sorry for the TMI, but this is a big deal in Momdum. 
• Mr. Noodle on Elmo's world is a little bit freaky.  He looks sneaky. 
• Dr. Pepper Icees are marvelous.  Cold, yummy, and the perfect texture.  I got turned back on to them while at Falls Creek.  Julie bought me one at the 7-Eleven near her house on Wednesday.  She agreed that it was the best .89 she's spent in a long time!
• I miss Nashville.  It hit me about 11pm last night.  So I am a little sad today.
• I saw Los Lonley Boyson Jay Leno the other night.  These guys rock!  I think that their big hit several years ago "Heaven" really does not do them justice.  I loved the bluesy, southern rock vibe and the face-melting guitar solo.  Yes my husband has turned me into a connoisseur of rock - I am not ashamed!

If I don't reflect, I plunge back into the darkness. Even now it would be easy for another year or two to pass before it happens again. As it is, I almost assume next time will be mid-September (after the school holidays). So, some differences from last time, worthy of note:

• I noticed at one point that my breathing was very deep and urgent. A was pressing herself against me. I seemed to be opening myself to her, letting her take me. I don't think I was doing this consciously, but something about my posture, the way I was stroking her. I know for a fact that I haven't behaved like that with her for many years, maybe even ever: and her not touching me should be interpreted in that light. I don't behave like that when I'm on autopilot (casting my mind back now;), but as I say I wasn't telling myself consciously. I actually think my current gay fantasies, which are all about craving and fearing intimacy (and inviting someone inside), have helped here.
• After the sudden pain problem of last time, I wanted to make sure A was always nice and wet, so I went down early and often for short visits, and gave her lots of lubrication. I asked explicitly if it was nice (it was). She was wetter and wetter and bigger and bigger. Then I thought the sudden pain problem was happening again, but she held me and made sure I stayed down there until it was over. I came up and held her and kissed her while she recovered. Beautiful darling.
• Soon we were in that extremely comfortable, chuckling stage, that is very pleasant, but signals that the sex is over.
• During the action, A had said how nice I was to her, and I'd said I was trying to be nicer and nicer. She said she'd noticed. Afterwards she asked me why --- what had changed. I said I'd changed the way I write my diary: now it is the most important thing I do at the start of every day (true fact. I started this new policy beginning 2008 and things have been getting --- gradually --- better since then. Another step change when I ran my perfect lips pilot project, and then a kind of catastrophe effect when I started this blog). I said I wanted my writing to be as important to me as the gym was for her. This was a good thing to say: she understood and approved.

A knows now that things are different, better, that I am different. That is a huge step forward. I'm especially pleased I could act open to her in bed, and that she could respond.

I now look to the summer with more equanimity. We live in a tiny house in the country, we have no family or childcare anywhere near. We will quite possibly have no daytime to ourselves until school starts again in September (today is B's last day at school!). After today I feel confident enough to think about evenings. And even if we don't manage anything over the summer, A and I both know that we have started something.

I asked A about her plans for the week, and suggested Thursday for a day in together. She raised her eyebrows and gave a little smile, and said Wednesday would be better. I said great! She said, ... perhaps Thursday actually, ... she would think it over.

Something short of wild enthusiasm, but a success I felt. The rest of the evening I was very conscious of my posture, wanting to stand up straight and be graceful. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed you might say.

I slept well overall, but woke in the middle of the night in a state: my whole body was numb and zinging at the same time, my balls were very painful. My cock wasn't hard but it felt desperate to come. I thought it was going to ejaculate on its own. I couldn't find a way to lie that felt safe. A snored gently beside me. My cock was crying out to me, "Wank me off! Please!!" I was tempted because it felt so strange and painful. But I thought, save myself for my appointment with A; try and get her to touch me. Eventually I managed to drift off to sleep.

This morning she said, yes, today, and went off to take B to school and go to the gym. I bustled about my work. When she returned she said she wasn't really up for it: tired, stressed, not feeling well. How about tomorrow? OK, I said. Today, she said, I'd like us to discuss the bathroom. So we've spent the day looking through toilet brochures.

Channel 4's "Dispatches" programme focused on the issue of the demonisation of Islam in the UK since the 2005 suicide bombings in London and in particular the campaign of fiction presented as fact and the misrepresentation of minor issues to elevate them to a status of shock and horror, all with the intention of presenting Muslims in the UK as a threat to national security.

Channel 4 comment blog here

Reading the posts made on that comment blog after the programme was shown simply illustrates the extent to which the media have formed minds like plasticine, watching the presenter Peter Osbourne interview journalists from The Daily Express and The Sun was like listening to a party political broadcast on behalf of the BNP, I was truly shocked by the depth of their prejudice and hatred, all of it neatly parceled up in birthday wrapping paper, tied with ribbon to make it look pretty and presented as "merely the opinion of our great British readership" - you can see how great some of their readers are when you read the Dispatches comment blog.

I honestly didn't think that newspapers had sunk so low as to become pure unfettered political rags, ok, I did, but I didn't realise just how far they'd sunk until last night - The Express Group with its infatuation for the death of a white Christian ex-princess who dared to date a Muslim ten years ago, is on a par with the Nazi owned press barons of pre 1938 Germany.

And the great shame is that far too many believe the diatribes that they print as fact.

Peter Osborne illustrated and investigated many of their stories from the past twelve months - "Muslims spreading super-bugs in our hospitals" was one such Express head line, based on their "story" that Muslim staff in British hospitals were refusing to roll up their sleeves when washing their hands before and during their shifts on the wards, the story being credited to an anonymous member of staff at a Leicestershire teaching hospital. Staff at the hospital in question were asked if this was the case, including the chief medical officer - the truth of the "story" was that they had been asked, once, some years ago, by a Muslim woman whether or not she had to roll up her sleeves when she scrubbed up, she was told yes, she complied, to this day they have had no Muslim staff refuse to comply.

This "story" made front page headlines in The Express.

Three days later they printed a four line apology somewhere deep inside the newspaper admitting that they had no grounds to suggest that such a thing had ever happened.

Several other racially biased and racially aggravating front page headlines were exposed as shams by simple journalistic questioning by Peter Osbourne, the sort of simple journalistic questioning that you imagine had been undertaken by The Express and The Sun reporters, and you can only then start to imagine what happened when they returned to their editors with the news that the story about those unclean bastard Muslims was actually not a story at all but all made up - "run it anyway" can have been the only reaction, "and polish it up a bit, its not anti-Muslim enough yet"

As one Muslim cleric mentioned last night, "we are told that all terrorists are Muslims and therefore all Muslims are terrorists, but all rapists are men, does this mean that all men are rapists" a logic that has not yet found its way into the brains of some of our national newspaper editors.

Or as another commentator mentioned last night, "Prior to the London suicide bombings, the previous bombing campaign was perpetrated by a white Christian man with a hatred of gays, he managed to explode three bombs and kill three people, does this mean that all white Christians hate gays ?"

Strangely enough the national press did not run headlines to suggest so.

After a while she seems to gather strength. She speaks now more lightly. As she talks now she rests her hand palm flat on my chest.

I can't remember the last time she touched me like that. Such a simple gesture, so easy yet so intimate. Why intimate I don't know. The palm completely flat on the other person's chest. Trusting perhaps.

Following on from touch. Some intimate details follow. See this comment for ethical justification.

A returned and, after filling me in on the morning's business, announced that she was going to the loo then getting in bed and going to sleep and I could join her if I wanted. OK, I said nonchalantly, I would join her. She went off to the loo. I finished scouring out the pan I was working on, calmly removed my rubber gloves, then ran through to the bedroom, tore my clothes off and dived into bed. Got myself snugged up.

A came in, continued with the newsreel, got into her pyjamas and into bed, still talking. I snugged up to her as close as I could. The pattern here is that A talks and talks, then goes to sleep. I said something nice to her which broke her discourse and we started kissing.

I was able to hold her to me, to feel her whole body, to slowly remove her clothes. I kissed her everywhere (well, OK, the front half of her body and her legs). I enjoyed the different smells and tastes of her body.

It's been so long, I found it strange and difficult to physically maneuvre myself around her body. To tell the truth I've often wished I could do without arms during lovemaking, and just be a kind of disembodied face with hands and legs, oh and a primary sex organ. Can arms be used erotically like legs can?

She said nice things to me, she kissed me back, her breathing and the colours of her skin changed. She clambered around me rather more nimbly than I clambered around her (she works out).

A comes very quickly, so at earliest signs I would back off for a while. I love stomach and back. Stomach feels very intimate just by being so soft and tender --- and I famously (among the three of us) do /not/ like my tummy being touched. Back, seemingly so distant and impersonal, but massaging and caressing the shoulders and neck feeds into the whole body, and touching the spine can start fires too.

A enjoyed the attention she was getting but I note now she didn't touch me in the same way, other than holding me and kissing my lips. I think I was too busy, or she wanted me to take the lead.

All was going well and I thought she was coming but suddenly she was in pain and we stopped. Too dry. My immediate thought was how to make sure she was nice and wet next time.

So we hugged and talked and we lay in bed for the rest of the morning. I held her to me and she let my mouth and hands roam freely.

It was very very nice. I want it to happen again soon. Next time I'll try and make sure she's wet, and I'll see if she'd like to touch me.

A wanted to show us both a new suit she'd bought for a do on Friday. B was bouncing his football around, wanting me to come and play outside with him. I had my throbbing sleep-deprivation headache and could barely stand. I said I'd come & join B outside shortly; he told A how nice the suit was and exit small boy.

The suit was fine. The question resolved into whether she would be too hot with the jacket on. Oh no, she was wearing the blue blouse. This is a blue silk crepe blouse, short-sleeved. It hugs her figure, not too tighty, but very suggestively, I find. I want to go over and run my hands over her body, over her breasts, her stomach, round her waist, kiss kiss down her face and neck and all over her breasts, carry on going down.

So, I hold on to the furniture and say it looks great. She seems pleased, and/but goes off to try on some other skirts, leaving me to attend to my paternal-sporting duties. I feel empty, I have nothing in my head, but I don't want the moment to end, so I stagger along behind her into the bedroom.

A has removed her suit and is in just the blouse and black knickers. She's burrowing into her skirts. She looks up and gives me a "what do you want hurry up can't you see I'm busy" look.

I walk over and start to kiss her. I kiss and kiss her face and mouth. Inside me I feel excitement bit a kind of terror as well, any moment I might step over the line and it'll all go horrible. From far away my arm rose up from the elbow and its hand rested around her breast, ..., stroked and fondled as softly as I could, "Mmm, ...". From an equal and opposite distance my other hand ran down her back and rested on the hem of her knickers above her cheeks. I felt the silky fabric. I love that place I don't know what its called at the base of the spine. She melted slightly into my embraces.

"I think you're nice," I blurted.

"I know," she replied

She gave me a smile/laugh, a girlish look that I haven't seen on her for years. A faint tide of surprise and relief washed over me. Not just the look she gave me but even what she said.

All this time the football was bouncing loudly on the other side of the bedroom window. We kissed for a short while longer, but there seemed nowhere to take it. The moment fizzled and petered out. A got back to her skirts and I went out to the football. It felt ugly and depressing but when we came back in there was no bad atmosphere.

There was no continuation at bedtime --- but I slept very well last night.

This morning before leaving A said casually, "Maybe I'll come straight back home after XYZ, as you're interested in that kind of thing." More news later, I have a good feeling.

Dr Tunje Lasoye, Head of Accident and Emergency in London's Kings College Hospital, is alarmed by the increase in gun and knife crime cases coming through the emergency doors, and in particular the falling age of the victims. His message, having spoken to police, offenders, victims, families and gang members both current and ex, this that urgent action is required now while the problem is still relatively isolated. If we fail, it can only spread. Full marks to Dr Lasoye for his wide-ranging exploration and presentation.

But to hear some of the gang members talk about their lives, their problems, their ambitions (staying alive, basically)... well, it's depressing stuff. It feels like it's going to take more than extra coppers on the beat and a couple of youth centres to sort this mess out. Critically, communities and families will have to come onboard if we're going to rid the streets of weapons - but there's not much evidence of that happening while stop-and-search tactics are felt to be divisive.

Did you see the programme? What did you think?

2008 has sen a staggering number of teenage gang and knife attacks on Britain's streets with a death toll comparable to that of our troops fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In this edition of Dispatches, part of the Disarming Britain season which examines the effect of gun and knife crime on Britain's streets, [Dr Tunje Lasoye, Head of Accident and Emergency in London's Kings College Hospital] meets police officers battling against the rising tide of violence and the victims - both the injured and those left behind by their murdered friends and family. And offering the insiders view, gang members, past and present, describe what drew them into carrying weapons.

Watch it if you can, and please let us know what you think here in the comments.

What did I do differently?

• For a start I had more energy, more emotional energy, I was more awake, and I was able to be attentive without fussing. I think putting emotional energy into this blog is giving me back the energy I need to intervene more accurately in my life.
• I took every opportunity to be near her, to hold her hand, stroke her thigh, kiss her anywhere. We have a competitively affectionate 8 year old, so I had to take care.
• I didn't let minor outbreaks of tension get me down. I had the image of this blog in my mind, and that helped me stick to my project --- in much the same way as the 'Perfect Lips' slogan did for my anti-biting project (see The Name).

I've kept a pen & paper diary for years, but that's never had this effect --- it's never fed back and influenced my behaviour. I think the semi-public nature of this blog (it's not fully public because I'm writing anonymously) is making the difference. It seems to be opening a kind of channel of communication between my 'public' and 'private' sides (see Action).

Tiny trivial detail showing signs of life, movement: in bed we lay reading, side-by-side. Her foot accidentally touched my leg --- and stayed: we lay reading, touching.

Another showing how easy it is to go too fast: each night after lights out, as we snugged down to sleep, I stroked her bottom. Each night she jumped and complained, "Ai!! Don't tickle my bottom!!"

Being near her --- all weekend, not just in bed --- turned me on like it hasn't for years.

But I can't get over how amazing it is to watch Emma play, or "get to work" in her UFO. There's a wonderful intensity in her eyes as she pushes and pulls on the appendages sticking out of the saucer. She tugs and twists them, determined to master what sits before her.

The Little One's awareness is also quickly developing -- she knows when someone enters the room and she quickly spins around when she hears a familiar voice. Her smile is captivating and hearing her laugh congers a feeling of pure joy.

She's taken to Berkeley and Greta, reaching for them when they come over to say hi. Her hands reach out and she feels their fur, scratching their backs and tugging on their ears. She loves cold bottles and wants to see and feel everything around her. My hair often becomes a rope for her to tug on and dangling earrings catch her eye (and you'd better watch out if they're within her grasp!).

My friends who were parents long before I had told me that there was no way to describe the joy of parenthood. And I think they're dead-on.

Even for someone who gets paid to write, I can't possibly capture with words my love for Emma, how she makes me feel after a long day's work or how I melt when she smiles and laughs.

Athens in the age of Pericles was a breeding ground of the profound. There the battle for the birth of the philosophy of the West was won. It might have been different. Protagoras, whose message that ‘man is the measure of all things’ has inspired a notable few, might have set his fellows in pursuit of possibilities. Of course, if he had, ‘we’ wouldn’t be talking about ‘the West’. But it wasn’t Protagoras who emerged triumphant; it was Plato. And so we have pursued the truth for more than two millennia.

But we pursue it no longer as we have no need to search for what we already have. Each man marches to the sound of his own drum but truth marks the time for us all.

This may sound Protagorean, but it is not. The idea that truth attaches to each person’s beliefs, regardless of what each believes, just in virtue of his believing it, is ultimately as Platonic as the idea that truth is the most discriminating of properties, bestowed only upon the beliefs that warrant it. That truth is a value and an achievement and merit that is and ought to be both universally distributed and individually determined—in a word, democratized—is not Protagoras’ idea but Plato’s meager understanding of his idea.

In order to render Protagoras’ dictum a real alternative to Plato’s project, it would be necessary to resist the comforting and conforming claim that truth, rightness, and rationality—correctness in all its forms—exist beyond ourselves. The spirit of the suggestion puts perspective first, as the foundation from which all else follows. When I believe that each is the measure of all things I thereby accept that what each believes each believes to be true, but I do not believe that what each believes is true. When I do not believe what you believe I cannot believe that what you believe is true, for what you believe has no purchase within the reality comprised by the totality of my beliefs. To think otherwise; to hold that what you believe is true even as I disbelieve it is for me to believe in a measure that operates, albeit relativistically, independently of my own. That would not be Protagoras’ picture but the relativized decay of Plato’s.

And who could deny that we are still Plato’s progeny? Our condition is confirmed with every claim to equal dignity, every demand to afford that very degree of respect to the convictions of others that we would normally reserve for our own. We have declined into democracy and the gravity of the huddled masses has proved great.

The irony of our devolution is considerable. Plato meant for the truth—as determined by the form of the Good—to lead us up from democracy, to free the noble few from the bonds of craven conventions and to save the rest from themselves. The truth was to be the purview of the rationally privileged, the benefits of which they would dispense as appropriate. By the time the refashioned version was put to post by Paul, however, the truth, as determined by God, no longer required the exercise of an unequally distributed rational capacity to be grasped but rather the opening of one’s heart to His Word, and that, anyone could do.

After the Renaissance, Bacon and Descartes, the Fathers of Modern Speculative Science, would begin the great effort, culminated in the Enlightenment, of relocating truth to the realm of reason rather than faith, but the effects of a Christian millennium meant that that realm was now open to all: reason had become universal.

The brilliant dawn of the Enlightenment shines rather surreally in retrospect. Reason, we now know, has no clothes: science and technology, however welcome, hold no answers for our most pressing political questions. (And no one would allow religion to answer them even if anyone believed that it could.) And so we have become democrats, each deciding the truth of the most important matters for himself.

The greatest irony, however, is that so many believe that this is how it ought to be. We have returned to democracy but have been Platonized in the process. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that one’s truth is only evident to one’s self.

This is not philosophically profound; it’s bankrupt. Here’s where our Western story ends.

Channel 4 Dispatches: Muslims Under Siege

Channel 4 Dispatches: Muslims in Britain Opinion Poll May 2008

Channel 4 Dispatches: Opinion Poll about Muslims in Britain May 2008

Channel 4 Dispatches: Headline Information from both commissioned opinion polls May 2008

If you're interested in reading more about this programme, you can do so at:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/it+shouldnt+happen+to+a+muslim/2314592

You can also watch the programme using Channel 4's '4 On Demand' service, available at:

http://www.channel4.com/4od/index.html

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(I've already been warned to lay off the poop stories...)

But since The Life of Emma is supposed to document our life, and since I've started the grandparent-name thread, I feel like I have to continue with updates as they occur.

But I'll keep it brief.

The maternal grandfather formerly known as "Papaw," who became "Papoo," has returned to the original moniker. Honey says "Papaw" is ingrained in everyone's head already and so rather than changing to Papoo because that's what his second-youngest granddaughter took to calling him, they've decided to teach her to say Papaw.

On the paternal grandparent front, Emma's Auntie Amanda has suggested the Hebrew words for grandmother and grandfather -- both of which escape me currently. Auntie Amanda may have come upon those suggestions as she was gearing up for her birthright Israel trip that she is now on.

And in other miscellaneous updates:

• Emma is doing wonderfully well (yes, she's THAT good);
• She's growing every day and she's smiling a lot;
• At school this week, she had her first encounter with a real fish. Her teacher brought in a whole trout, explaining that stuffed animals just don't offer enough contextual information to young minds;
• Emma likes to dance on the bathroom counter top before her bath, and she's now known for peeing as she dances;
• She's now eating six to eight ounces of breastmilk and/or formula instead of four ounces;
• And she loves her new "exersaucer," which I call the UFO.

With another weekend rapidly approaching, I'll try to post some multimedia here soon. Until then...