Late (and great) breaking news:

GENEVA: Over 57 percent of Swiss voters on Sunday approved a blanket ban on the construction of Muslim minarets, according to official results posted by a Swiss news agency.

Results compiled from 25 out of 26 cantons indicate that 57.05 percent of the population have voted in favour of the ban.

Partial results from the final canton Ticino, also indicate a majority of 68 percent for a ban on minarets -- the turrets or towers attached to mosques from where Muslims are called to prayer.

What would Poor Richard's Almanac make of this?

Side by side across the top of the front page of the New York Times today are two economic stories: "US to Pressure Mortgage Firms for Loan Relief" and "Food Stamp Use Soars Across the U.S., and Stigma Fades."

From the mortgage story:

The Obama administration on Monday plans to announce a campaign to pressure mortgage companies to reduce payments for many more troubled home owners, as evidence mounts that a $75 billion taxpayer-financed effort aimed a stemming forclosures is foundering.

"The banks are not doing a good enough job," Michael S. Barr, Treasury's assistant secretary for financial institutions said ... "Some of the firms ought to be embarassed and they will be."

Even...

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From the Wall Street Journal:

In a little-noticed interview Friday, Mr. Dobbs told Spanish-language network Telemundo he now supports a plan to legalize millions of undocumented workers, a stance he long lambasted as an unfair "amnesty."

The LA Times blog called the Dobbs flip flop "the surest sign yet that the newly former CNN talker seriously plans to enter politics."

In response to my marking the intersection of cutting-edge Glenn Beck and catching-up New York Times on financial dysfunction and inevitable-seeming collapse on Tuesday -- underscored by yesterday's "shock announcement" that Dubai was unable to meet its debt payments (couldn't have happened to nicer bunch of guys) -- financial hawkeye George Ford wrote in Wednesday with the following thoughts:

...

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When I first saw this image of the $100 American Eagle Platinum coin  posted at View from the Right, I did think it might turn out to be a hoax, which is likely some denial of my own kicking in. But sure enough, as I found at the US Mint's website this is the Real McCoy. (For some reason, I can't link to the page but here is a news release with the image.) Here is what the US Mint says about this nightmare of Multiculturalist Realism:

In 2009, the United States Mint introduced a new six-year platinum coin program. This new series explores the core concepts of American democracy by highlighting the preamble of the U. S. Constitution. It will examine the six principles found in the preamble beginning with To Form a More Perfect Union in 2009, followed by To Establish Justice in 2010, To Insure Domestic Tranquility in 2011, To Provide for the Common Defence in 2012, To Promote the General Welfare in 2013, and To Secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity in 2014. The themes for the reverse designs for this program are inspired by narratives prepared by the chief justice of the United States at the request of the United States Mint.

...

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This week's column is indeed a "holiday" column, although celebratory it is not. These are not celebratory times -- despite the robber-baron scale of entertaining going on in Washington as the Obamas find the 140-seat state dining room inadequate for the 400 guests they entertained last night under an elaborate tent constructed on the South Lawn for their first State Dinner.

Actually,"robber-baron" is the wrong term. Robber barons were stuffed with money, which they lavishly spent. What we are seeing today is stimulus-baron entertaining on borrowed money and time.

Still, it is Thanksgiving tomorrow, and with Thanksgiving, Americans give thanks. This column asks that we give pause also, and remember the brave men who answered the call of this country and now languish in prison for doing so. Upsetting? Do something about it....

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"Elected and Appointed U.S. Government Officials Who Violate Their Oath of Office and the Constitution Must Resign or Be Impeached"

By Paul E. Vallely MG, US Army (Ret)

The Declaration of Independence states: “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.”

The arrogance of power in government has reached intolerable proportions.

Their oath reads:

“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign...

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The mastermind behind this despicable barbarism -- the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater security guards in Fallujah in 2004 --

... seem to have got socked in the mouth after capture, and now three of the commandos who captured him, our finest Navy SEALS, are charged with criimal assault and will face a court martial.

Fox's Rowan Scarborough has the details here (via Gen. Paul Vallely).

Glenn Beck opened his show yesterday with the lead story of the New York Times -- "Wave of Debt Payments Face US Government" -- which underscored and repeated many of Beck's longtime themes of financial dysfunction leading to collapse via continued government borrowing to spend on a colossal scale.

Well, the Times didn't come right out and say that, exactly, but what other conclusion is there to draw from, for example, the projected $700 billion Americans are expected to pay in 2019  just to service the $12 trillion deficit....

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I missed Aram Rostom's expose of what is in effect and in part a giant Pentagon-to-Taliban payola scheme when it came out earlier this month in the Nation (not ordinarily high on my reading list). Now circulating in various publications on the Left -- but sent my way by John Bernard (no Lefty, he) -- this story of the systemic US-Afghan corruption that undergirds our continued presence in Afghanistan must not be dismissed as political fodder for just one side of the spectrum. This is a story of central importance to the American people, and deserves Left, Right and middle of the road attention.

Roston's digging attempts to lay bare the interlocking webs of corruption and pay-offs in which the US has enmeshed itself in an effort to  supply US outposts in hostile territory -- i.e., all of Afghanistan. Our military people depend on those supply convoys for everything. But what kind of commanders...

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Gates of Vienna today features a powerfully enlightening, absolutely must-read interview with Filip Dewinter, the leading politician of Vlaams Belang party in Beligum and frequent subject of this blog.

Americans tend to shake their heads and cluck over Europe's dire struggle with Islamization as though the continent were already lost even as  they complacently luxuriate in the thought that It Can't Happen Here. Well, it is happening here, as this blog repeatedly catalogues, and we have no one of the calibre and courage of Dewinter (or his political counterpart in Holland, Geert Wilders) in public office to stop it.       

GoV's Baron Bodissey sets up Filip's interview like so:

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an interview with Vlaams Belang leader Filip Dewinter from the Dutch opinion weekly HP/de Tijd. It was published on Thursday in the printed edition of the paper:...

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An extremely chilling and alarming look at the  anatomy of yet another capitulation to Islamic prohibitions on criticism of Islam from the Daily Princetonian:

A planned Wednesday talk by controversial Egyptian-American activist Nonie Darwish was cancelled Tuesday evening when both of the event’s sponsors, Tigers for Israel (TFI) and the American Whig-Cliosophic Society, withdrew their sponsorship, citing her criticism of Islam.

Darwish, a writer and the founder of Arabs for Israel and Former Muslims United, was scheduled to give a talk Wednesday afternoon titled “Sharia Law and Perspectives on Israel.” TFI officers rescinded their invitation, however, explaining that they had not been fully aware of Darwish’s views when they invited her to speak.

"Views"...

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This week's column is a case study in psyops -- an examination of what amounts to a domestic jihadist operation in to suppress and demonize critics of Islamic supremacism and expansionism in Virginia via a widely respected, or, at least, widely accepted media outlet.

The operation -- which we may think of as a Muslim Brotherhood, ISNA, CAIR affair -- was mainly a success due to two factors: the gullibility/culpability of the Washington Post, which allowed MB-linked mouthpieces to remain unidentified as such and turn Pat Robertson's wholly rational critique of Islam into a cause demanding "repudiation" and "apology" from Robertson-ally and governor-elect of Virginia Bob McDonnell. The second factor is the reaction of the governor-elect himself. After a couple of days of sidestepping the matter,...

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So, the United States military finds it in its most merciful heart to release Laith Al-Khazali, an Iranian-backed killer of many Americans, but consigns a US Marine, Larry Hutchins, to 11 years in prison for killing one Iraqi in order, as Hutchins says, to protect his men. (Read more about Hutchins's case here.)

That was the shameful verdict of Bush administration's Donald Winter and, today, that's the shameful verdict of  the Obama administration's Secretary of Navy Ray Mabus, incidentally -- or not incidentally -- a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and, like his boss Prez Obama, holder of that simply gloriously fabulous and meritorious commendation, the King Abdul Aziz Award. (Yuck.)

Update: Marine Mom writes in to note that the Secretary of the Navy also ordered four of the other...

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Here (below), via Vlad Tepes, is an extraordinary opportunity to learn how to talk about Islam and Islamization.This lesson in free speaking is by Kent Ekeroth, international secretary of the Sweden Democrats. Would that our politicians and pundits would learn from it.  

Pvt. William Long and his killer Abdulhakim Muhammad

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Little Rock and Ft. Hood are both acts of jihad against US troops in the USA and need to be seen as such together. To be sure, the Little Rock killer Abdulhakim Muhammad wasn't an Army officer who presented his classic, by-the-books, understanding of the central concepts of Islamic jihad in a 50- slide PowerPoint presentation, but he sure was eagerly frank about his motives in a collect call he placed to the AP back in June to make sure the world knew he wasn't just a "loner" who "snapped."

From the AP (via Fox), June 9. 2009:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  — 

A Muslim convert charged with fatally shooting an American soldier at a military recruiting center said Tuesday that he doesn't consider the killing a murder because U.S. military action in the Middle East made the killing justified....

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A positive development in the quest for recognition that Hasan's jihad on Ft. Hood was an act of war: US Rep. John Carter, the Republican who represents the Texas district that includes Ft. Hood, is introducing a bill to grant combatant status to those killed and wounded by Hasan ("allegedly") on Nov. 5.

Pvt. William Long, killed by an avowed jihadist outside a Little Rock Army-Navy recruiting station, and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, wounded,  deserve to be on that list as well.

But Carter's bill is the correct first step. Whether the bill passes in a Democrat-controlled Congress is the question. And whether it...

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Senior, unnamed (!) administration official: "He observes protocol."

Too bad no one else does (allery via Hot Air):



Israel, Jordan



...

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Behold the Iranian (left) and Turkish (right) pavillions at the Baghdad Trade Fair this week.

As the NYT reports: "Six years and a trillion dollars after the American invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and one country was conspicuously absent."

 

Guess who-oo? The NYT answers:

That would be the country that spent a trillion dollars — on the invasion and occupation, but also on training and equipping Iraqi security forces, and on ambitious reconstruction projects in every province aimed at rebuilding the country and restarting the economy.

You know -- the USA. The Times reports:

Yet when the post-Saddam Iraqi government swept out its old commercial fairgrounds and invited companies from around the world, the United States was not much in evidence among the 32 nations represented. Of the 396 companies that exhibited their wares, “there are two or three American participants, but I can’t remember their names,” said Hashem Mohammed Haten, director general of Iraq’s state fair company. A pair of missiles atop a ceremonial gateway to the fairgrounds recalled an era when Saddam Hussein had pretensions, if not weapons, of mass destruction.

...

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It's General Diversity! In a slightly saner world,  Army Chief of Staff Gen. George "Diversity" Casey would be fired.

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This week's syndicated column:

Stephen Coughlin is an attorney and intelligence officer who was once the Pentagon's sole specialist on Islamic law. He lectured on jihad doctrine -- what the Koran and key Islamic texts actually say about waging war -- to military leaders who had been (and continue to be) strategizing, planning and fighting the so-called war on terror without any knowledge of the jihad doctrine behind the terror.

Hesham Islam, an Islamic aide to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, rejected what Coughlin's brief said about Islamic jihad, even though the brief, which I've had the opportunity to attend, relies solely on authoritative Islamic sources. Under Islam's tutelage, England and the rest of the Pentagon brass preferred...

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No PVV permitted.

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Get a load of the Dutch establishment's latest attempt to marginalize, indeed, demonize, Holland's best hope for halting and, indeed, reversing its advanced state of Islamization. That would, of course, be Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom, which, in Dutch, is known as the PVV. Now, Dutch license plates may no longer carry this three-letter combo because it has been officially, if anonymously, determined to be "taboo, offensive or provocative." Radio Netherlands Worldwide has the story:

The Netherlands Office for Road Traffic has banned the letters PVV from car registration number plates. The three letters form the name of Geert Wilders' anti-Islam Freedom Party. Daily AD writes that the office decided to add the abbreviation...

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Hasan has now been charged with 13 counts of murder. (It should be 14 since one of those murdered was pregnant.)

The NYT notes: "Of the 13 people who were killed, four were officers, 8 were enlisted soldiers and one was a civilian.'

Just as military personnnel killed and wounded at the Pentagon on 9/11 were awarded Purple hearts, so, too, should the 12 military personnel killed and 29 wounded at Ft. Hood.

After 9/11, a new medal, the Defense of Freedom Medal, was created to honor Defense Department civilian employees killed and wounded on that day. One such medal should go to the civilian killed at Ft. Hood.

Whether they receive such medals depends on the outcome of the argument whether Hasan's rampage was an act of jihad -- YES -- or the result of "stress," or, as Geraldo Rivera wondered, perhaps a bad "toothache."

Don't hold your breath. Pvt. William Long, killed...

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On this Veterans' Day, I would like to draw your attention to retired Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely's  annual Christmas gift drive for our valiant troops serving in battle zones:

 

The Scott Vallely Soldiers’ Memorial Fund Is sponsoring for the Fifth Year its Annual Christmas Gift Program For the Troops Our Elves will be shopping, packing and shipping… We need your continuous generosity and donations to support This worthwhile effort To support this Project…go to www.soldiersmemorialfund.org to donate or send your donation to SMF PO Box 1596 Bigfork, Montana 59911 (Checks payable to Soldiers Memorial Fund – a 501 c 3 org) Or make a donation online  

 

 

 

MG Vallely, PFC Scott Vallely and Mrs. Vallely  

...

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"What -- me, authoritarian?"

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More on the continuing saga of the evolution of an Iraqi authoritarian -- our pal Maliki (story via Islam in Europe).

This time, the Iraqi PM didn't care for an article in the British newspaper the Guardian that quoted allegations about his increasing authoritarianism, so he sued for defamation in Iraq and -- mirabile dictu -- won.

How did this incredibly surprising and non-authoritarian verdict come about? The Guardian reports: After an Iraqi court heard from "a new, five-member panel who argued that Iraqi publishing law did not allow foreigners to publish articles critical of the prime minister or president, or to interfere in Iraqi internal affairs," the court ruled that the Guardian owed the PM about $150,000.

In other words, as Kimberly Kagan would say, that...

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Al-Azhar University, the "de facto Vatican of Sunni Islam," as Andrew Bostom puts it, where Hasan's Powerpoint presentation on the jihadi threat within would surely get an "A."

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Andrew Bostom. author of The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism, answers this key question at his blog today:

The Washington Post has published an online gallery of the 50-slide erstwhile “medical grand rounds”...

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Maj. Stephen Coughlin (USAR) is a  lawyer and reserve military intelligence officer who used to be the Pentagon's sole specialist on Islamic law charged with lecturing about jihad doctrine -- what the Koran and assorted Islamic texts say about Islamic holy war -- to military leaders who had been (and continue to be) strategizing, planning, and fighting the so-called war on terror for years without any comprehension of Islamic ideology.

Hesham Islam, an Islamic aide to then Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England didn't care for what Coughlin's brief said about Islam -- even though the brief relies on authoritative Islamic sources. Under Islam's tutleage, England and, thus, the Pentagon preferred outreach -- you know, Muslim outreach -- even to unindicted co-conspirators in government terrorism cases. Long story short: Muslim outreach was "in," and Coughlin and his famous brief on jihad doctrine {"To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad") were "out." (Brief available here.)

...

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Via Jihadwatch:

Via Debbie Schlussel:

Hey, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Casey and Naval Academy Commandant Matt Klunder! What's wrong with this picture?

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Yankee Stadium is a long way from Ft. Hood, but the same cult of "diversity," as administered by the fanatical high priests in our military,bewitches both places.

We know what happened at Ft. Hood -- a self-identified "Palestinian" Muslim Army psychiatrist who has publicly affirmed principles of jihad and was, as ABC News is reporting, known by the CIA to have been trying to contact al Qaeda jihadists for months -- killed 13 and wounded 29. However, partly "because the Army was trying to recruit Arab-Americans," as the New York Times tells us...

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This week's column in the Washington Examiner:

Finally, some transparency from the Obama White House. I refer to see-through efforts to affect nonchalance about Tuesday's elections in which Republicans made gains unthinkable just a year ago.

No, of course President Obama wouldn't be watching election returns, senior aides told the media in advance. Wasn't there a Chicago Bulls game on that night?

But it wasn't elections in general that put the president off. It was these elections in particular. As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later reported, the president spent Election Night 2009 watching an HBO special about his own election in 2008. By Gibbs' reckoning, as Newsbusters.com's Kyle Brennen notes, this was the...

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I reference MacArthur in the headline because of the famous exchange between MacArthur and FDR after MacArthur, then Army Chief of Staff, learned that FDR was cutting the army budget to fund New Deal programs.

MacArthur said to Roosevelt, "When we lose the next war and an American boy is writhing in pain in the mud with a Japanese bayonet in his belly, I want the last words that he spits out in the form of a curse to be not against Douglas MacArthur but against Franklin Roosevelt." FDR was enraged, and he said, "Never speak to the President of the United States that way." And MacArthur offered to resign, but Roosevelt brightened and said, "No, no, Douglas, we must get together on this."

That was a long time ago.

In the wake of the "Allahu Akbar" slaughter of infidels at Ft. Hood (there I go again, "jumping to conclusions"), today's Army Chief of Staff Gen....

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Some backstory to the Ft. Hood Massacre by a "Palestinian" Muslim officer in the United States Army.

First, why do I call Hasan a "Palestinian"? Because he has  identified himself as Palestinian.

Why do I call him "Muslim"? Despite what dhimmi-media are not bothering to mention, or barely mentioning in passing, he is a Muslim. In this Age of Jihad, this is RELEVANT.

Elementary example: If, during World War II, a German-American Nazi had shouted "Sieg Heil" befor committing a similar unspeakable act on a US base, his German-ness and Nazi beliefs would also have been RELEVANT. (Of course, had such an officer been arguing against US involvement in WWII and calling for...

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The AP has reported that authorities had "concerns" about Hasan's Internet postings and offered the following as an example:

To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its (sic) more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause," said the Internet posting. "Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.

Here, via Mediaelites, is the full quotation:

There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier...

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From the AP via Andrew Bostom:

The Army psychiatrist suspected of carrying out a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas [NEWS FLASH: HE IS ALIVE], had come to the attention of authorities six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

The postings appeared to have been made by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was killed during the shootings at the Army post that left least 11 others dead and 31 wounded. The officials say they are still trying to confirm that he was the author. They said an official investigation was not opened.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed...

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Did I just say "more to come"?

It's here:

Shepherd Smith of Fox News just interviewed a retired army colonel named Terry Lee who worked with Hasan,

According to Lee, Hasan frequently spoke out against American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying "maybe Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor." Lee said felllow officers at first assumed Hasan meant stand up to insurgent-aggressors, but that was not the case.

More outrageous: After the Little Rock jihad shooting at the Army-Navy recruiting station that killed Pvt. William Long, Lee said Hasan "was almost sort of happy about it."  A couple of other officers called him on this but Hasan kept saying maybe we should just get out and Muslims should just stand up to the aggressor.

Lee said he was told by a third person that Hasan had said of the Little Rock attack, "Maybe we should have more of these, and have people strap bombs on themselves in Times Square...."

...

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The Ft. Hood mass-murderer, identified as Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, was early on said to have been a recent convert to Islam. Fox now confirms that the 39-year-old Virginian-born psychiatrist was a Muslim convert.

Does Hasan's conversion to Islam make his assault on American forces an act of jihad? And who converted him, anyway?

So far, I haven't heard any media even ask the question. Instead, we are already getting a heavy vibe about Hasan's having been disgruntled about an upcoming deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, and a negative job evaluation.

More to come.

The debate over Afghanistan is joined in the UK after five British troops were shot dead this week by a three-year veteran of the Afghan National Police inside a secure checkpoint, and Kim Howells, an ex-Foreign Office minister who formerly supported the war effort, came up with a proposal titled "Bring the troops home to fight Al Qaeda in Britain."

War as nation-building stands exposed as murderous folly. And the British strategy, which dovetails with our own, is revealed for all its vicious circularity. As the Telegraph writes:

The shooting marked a dreadful new chapter in Britain’s eight-year engagement in Afghanistan, as it was the first time British soldiers...

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Kim Howells is a British Labour MP who formerly oversaw Afghanistan for the Foreign Office, supported the war there, and now serves as chairman of the parliamentary intelligence and security committee. I can't imagine that I would find all of his policies to be my cup of tea, but in today's Guardian, he published a proposal containing some extremely sensible and therefore extremely controversial measures called: "It's time to pull out of Afghanistan and take the fight to Bin Laden in Britain" (with thanks to Baron Bodissey):

For the best part of seven years the British public appeared to accept the argument that, if we didn't deploy our troops to fight al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan, we might be forced to fight them on the streets of Britain. In recent months, however, it seems that public support for our military involvement in that United Nations-led...

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NYC sharia alert (via Jihadwatch) from the New York Post.

Not that the New York Post knows it is printing a NYC sharia alert, but it is. The story, about a homosexual couple being bounced from a Muslim-driven cab, is from the same playbook as the The  Breslin story about a mosque demanding a new restaurant/bar stop serving alchohol. The Post story and headline are neutral (read: clueless) on the topic of Islamic attitudes toward homosexuality (hurling homosexuals from a window and stoning them where they lie, if still living, is one penalty I've come across). Clearly, the Post thinks it is reporting business as usual, with a typically honkin' headline...

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Five British soldiers are dead today, fatalities of see-no-Islam political correctness. The story from the AP:

KABUL— An Afghan policeman opened fire on British soldiers in the volatile southern province of Helmand, killing five before fleeing, British and Afghan authorities said Wednesday, raising concerns about discipline within the Afghan forces and possible infiltration by insurgents.

Possible  infiltration?

The attack Tuesday afternoon came a month after an Afghan policeman on patrol with U.S. soldiers fired on the Americans, killing two.

And a couple of months after an Afghan policeman in Kabul shot and seriously wounded an American soldier on a "U.S. police mentoring team."

Training and operating jointly with Afghan police and soldiers is key to NATO's strategy of dealing with the spreading Taliban-led...

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Five years ago today.

After I spoke about The Yale Mohammed Mess at a conference on free speech in Washington last week, James Cohen of the Canadian Free Press Society invited me to have a chat -- on camera. Results below.