Via Gates of Vienna.

Don't miss this one if only for the cavalry-is-coming moment when the English Defense League shows up.

Serious Business: A face you can trust and a book you can buy

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Bob Woodward is back again with another tell-all book, indulging in that singular you-are-there chronicle that includes gestures, emotion, point-of-view, as well as a narrative bolstered by statements bracketed in quotation marks. Of course, Woodward was not there; he never is. Or is he sometimes? That melodramatic, hospital-room interview of CIA director William Casey, back when Iran-Contra seemed important (Why did you do it? "I believed...."), always sounded kind of fishy. And in the end, where are we on Deep Throat? I forget. Anyway, now, a member of Casey's security detail is piping up to claim in a memoir that none of the agents allowed Woodward in Casey's room. Of course, that only adds one more log to the jam pressurized by partisans of both sides. (The Washington Post's Jeff Stein has a good run-down here.) Which helps explain why it is always hard to know exactly on which side of the line to shelve the Woodward oeuvre.

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This week's syndicated column:

Your tax dollars at work:

"In a mock Afghan village on the Quantico Marine base," the Washington Post reports, "Sloan Mann, a military contractor, guided several Marines into a sweltering concrete room. They came to meet a fake mullah, played by an Afghan American actor. Mann, a former Army infantry officer, watched as the Marines practiced the seemingly straightforward tactic of chatting up Afghan village leaders."

The article goes on to describe Sgt. Walton Cabrera, 25, who "sat before the mullah but couldn't ease into a groove. `So ... how's everything in the village so far?' he asked. `Has the population changed?'

"Armed with a pen and report card, Mann, 36, handed up harsh feedback. `No rapport," he wrote.'"

No rapport? But that's a good thing. America will truly be in trouble when our best young people actually relate to the dominant members of Afghanistan's violent, misogynistic, pederasty-prone, polygamous, tribal, Islamically supremacist and corrupt culture. But Mann, currently delivering on a tidy $1.5 million annual contract with the Pentagon, has a job to do. He pulled several Marines aside near the mock Afghan bazaar to give them expert instruction: "You guys don't like building rapport? Chill. Have a conversation. Hang out with them."

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From the Daily Mail (via Andrew Bostom):

"Six arrested after burning on Koran on 9/11 `for the boys in Afghanistan' is posted online"

Excerpt:

In the film the gang are seen gathered round a copy of the Koran in the backyard of The Bugle pub in Leam Lane, Felling, Gateshead.  

Appearing with what seems to be tea towels wrapped around their heads, the men show the holy book to the camera before dousing it with fuel from a red can and lighting it.  

One man in a grey Adidas tracksuit and white trainers, who has a blue cloth wrapped around his head makes a series of obscene gestures towards the book as it burns.  

Laughing, the track-suited gang shouts 'This is for the boys in Afghanistan.  September 11, international burn a Koran day, for all the people...

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Michael J. Del Rosso, a colleague of mine on the recently released Team B II report, "Shariah: The Threat," has a question for the media, now covering and prepping coverage of the GOP Pledge.

Is there is any chance, he wonders, that "their analysis of the GOP Pledge might raise the glaring omission that -- nine years into a shooting war with 3,000 innocent civilians murdered in the homeland, many more thousands of troops Killed In Action, tens of thousands more Wounded In Action, hundreds of thousands traumatized by combat operations, over a trillion dollars spent and no end in sight -- OUR POLITICAL ELITES IN BOTH PARTIES SEEM UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO IDENTIFY OUR ENEMY, THEIR DOCTRINE, AND THEIR OBJECTIVES!"

Michael describes the crisis of our times, an abdication of responsibility, moral and...

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Petraeus as quoted by Woodward:

"You have to recognize also that I don't think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It's a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we're in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids' lives."

That would be something like the next hundred years.

When will we rid ourselves of this insane thinking?

Meanwhile, could someone pls. ask the general what exactly his next century of "fighting" is for?

This week's syndicated column:

Another Sept. 11 is behind us, leaving something new and disturbing, a dark spawn to examine with plenty of careful soul-searching.

That legacy begins with the reflexive, lockstep process by which an American citizen, Terry Jones, was simultaneously depicted and denounced as a raving lunatic for even conceiving of his plan to burn copies of the Koran to mark the ninth anniversary of demonstrably Koran-inspired attacks. In society's fearful fervor to distance itself from Jones, there was evidence of that same politically correct lie that has plagued us from Day 1: that there exists no logical and discernible connection between what the Koran commands and what happened on 9/11. Thus, Jones' lawful, harmless symbolic stunt making the connection -- burning copies of the Koran at his Florida church -- became a paralyzing taboo, and Terry Jones was demonized with impunity, even by many who defended his free-speech protections and constitutional rights.

It's...

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Here, if you can stand it (and pls. refrain from hacking at your neighbor while shouting `Allah Akbar'), is the Molly Norris cartoon that has drawn the Islamic death penalty.



Fox News, so far alone among big media (does MSNBC count?), has picked up on the absolutely outrageous and signally important Norris story. Good. But notice there is NO  ILLUSTRATION at Fox for viewers to look at to assess what sparked the rage of Islam that America now bows to by allowing a citizen to abandon her life to save it.

Pardon me for noticing, but since the sharia-prohibited cartoon does not appear in the Fox News report about the sharia-prohibited cartoon, Fox News, Lord...

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Andy McCarthy writes today at The Corner about a project he and I and others have been working on for many months. Conceived of by Frank Gaffney in the tradition of the Cold war-era "Team B" report that presented a muscular alternative to detente-era policies of Soviet "engagement," our Team B II project aimed at presenting a similar alternative to policies of Muslim "engagement"by grappling with the implications of Islamic ideology as codifed in Islamic law -- sharia.

The report -- "Shariah: The Threat to America" -- launched yesterday with a press conference in the Capitol.

The report, as Andy notes,  is the product of  a group effort by:

a team of national security experts led by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), former...

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A truly dire -- if casually reported -- message from an outpost of the Civilization formerly known as Western.

From the Seattle Weekly:

On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View Her work won't be in Seattle Weekly anymore, or anywhere else. By Mark D. Fefer You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, "going ghost": moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she...

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An urgent message (which I just updated with more information) from my friend Ted Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats:

Dear friends,

Yet another dire event in Sweden and a major setback for freedom of speech. Let's first start with a part of the press statement we just made:

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Sweden Democrats' planned public meetings in Norrköping, Karlstad, Eskilstuna, have in all cases been cancelled by the police after they informed us that they are unable to guarantee the safety of speakers.

This morning, a planned square meeting with party secretary, Björn Söder, in Norrköping was cancelled. In Eskilstuna, Björn Söder was met by a large group of Left-wing extremist counter-demonstrators. That meeting was also aborted by advice from the police. In spite of police escort, the vehicle that the party secretary and other Sweden Democrats...

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Alex Stewart, an Australian commercial contracts lawyer, satirized the dhimmi rush to avert Kindling Koran Rage by rolling what he now says were grass clippings into a page of the Bible and a page of the Koran and smoking them both -- on a Youtube video, now sharia-censored.

In fact, according to the Courier Mail, the man's entire "YouTube account, which was used to post around 100 videos, many of them challenging religion, has been closed and the videos deleted."

That's not all. After meeting with his employer, Queensland University of Technology, over the Koran and Bible smoking video, Stewart has taken an indefinite leave of absence and, according to the Brisbane Times, expects to lose his job....

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From the New York Daily News:

The protester who burned pages from the Koran outside a planned mosque near Ground Zero has been fired from NJTransit, sources and authorities said Tuesday.

Derek Fenton's 11-year career at the agency came to an abrupt halt Monday after photographs of him ripping pages from the Muslim holy book and setting them ablaze appeared in newspapers.

Fenton, 39, of Bloomingdale, N.J., burned the book during a protest on the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11 outside Park51, the controversial mosque slated to be built near Ground Zero. ...

Islamic law is here and now. But it is enforced not by the fatwas of ayatollahs or mullahs of the Islamic umma, but by the arbitrary powers of psuedo-ayatollahs and faux-mullahs of the American state -- in this case, the New Jersey Transit Authority. Elevating Islam's law above our Constitution, these government officials have chosen to punish the "blasphemer," in the process devaluing and, indeed, ceding our constutitional...

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"And as I watch not only the battle in New York but also the reaction to the Rev. Terry Jones's threat to burn the Koran in Florida on the Sept. 11 anniversary, I feel optimistic."

--Tariq Ramadan, Washington Post, 9/12/1010

The best takeaway we seem to be left with on "the battle in New York" over the GZ mosque is that the mosque should be moved, and that Imam Rauf is a bad hombre. (Tariq Ramadan agrees on moving the mosque, which, believe me, is no victory.) We are no closer, however, to any understanding, as Turkey's PM Erdogan might (and has) put it, that "the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Indeed, megamosque construction -- and along with it, the construction of sharia-based communities -- continues barely noted across the country.

Maybe worse, though, is that microburst of sharia-inspired hellfire that rained down last week on the Florida man who wanted to demonstrate against the jihad...

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If the world-famous Dutch opponent of Islamization speaks about the proposed mosque at Ground Zero in NYC on 9/11, will anyone hear report on it?

Judging by the MSM, apparently not.

Here, from Geert Wilders' website, is the text of yesterday's speech:

Dear friends, May I ask you to be silent for ten seconds? Just be silent and listen. Ten seconds. And listen… What we hear are the sounds of life in the greatest city on earth.   No place in the world, no place in human history, is as richly varied and vibrant and dynamic as New York City. You hear the cars, you hear the people, you hear them rushing to their various destinations, you hear the sounds of business and of pleasure, you hear the cheers, you hear the cries, the buzzing sounds of human activity. And that is how it should be. Always. Now close your eyes – I know it’s a beautiful day, but close your eyes....

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CNS.com's Patrick Goodenough reports today on activity at the OIC hive, where busy bees are attempting to use the Florida Koran incident (whether it comes off or not) as an impetus for advancing OIC plans to censor the Islam debate -- to seek a law "criminalizing all forms of offense against religions [read: Islam] under any circumstances" -- through changes in  international law.

NB: "Religions" (plural) is a deception because under Islam it is in fact apostasy to believe in the validity of other religions because they have been in effect nullified by Islam. See, for example, w4.1(2) in Reliance of the Traveller, which states, among other things, that "previously revealed religions were valid in their own eras, as is attested in many verses of the Holy Koran, but were abrogated by the universal message of Islam. Both points are worthy of attention from English-speaking Muslims, who are occasionally exposed to erroneous theories ... affirming these religions' validity but denying or...

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This week's syndicated column:

When reading stories about that formerly obscure Florida preacher who wants to mark the ninth anniversary of 9/11 by burning a stack of Qurans, bear in mind that the only law he breaks in doing so is Islamic law. With this in mind, it should become clear that the extraordinary global campaign against this stunt is yet another concerted effort, aided by an army's worth of useful fools, to bring our constitutional republic into conformance with Islamic law.

Islam demands "respect" with an intensity and strategic purpose well beyond other beliefs. (Still) don't believe me? For indelible culture contrast, imagine the worldwide body count in reaction to a hypothetical NEA-funded project entitled "Piss Mohammed," or the absence of a worldwide body count in reaction to the Army's actual decision to discard and burn a bunch of Bibles on a U.S. base in Afghanistan last year for fear of offending Muslims in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan -- a land where Christian...

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A reader writes in with an email from Dove World, the ministry of Florida's Terry Jones, whose plans to burn Korans to mark 9/11 have just received a 2011 performance art grant from the National Endowment for the Arts -- of course, that's obviously not true at all, but with a deft twist Leftward, it could well be. Anyway, back to the church email shared by a reader. It describes a situation where the walls are closing in on the church organization, namely:

City of Gainesville has denied the church a burn permit.

RBC Bank has called in its mortgage on the property, meaning that there is now a limited time to pay it off.

Cotton All-Lines Insurance has cancelled its commercial insurance policy on the church property, which puts the mortgage into immediate default.

And a commenter at Lawrence Auster's View from the Right notes that Dove World's internet provider Rackspace shut down the Dove World church website. The commenter reports:

The center 'violated the hate-speech...

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Back in 2005, Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen set the gold standard on defending free speech when, on being approached by perpetually aggrieved Islamic ambassadors hoping for official redress against Jyllands Posten (Cartoon Rage was just kicking in), he refused to hear their plaints, explaining to them and the world that it was not his place, as prime minister, to interfere with free speech in Denmark.

“This is a matter of principle. I will not meet with them [the ambassadors] because it is so crystal clear what principles Danish democracy is built upon that there is no reason to do so...As prime minister, I have no power whatsoever to limit the press – nor do I want such power.”

In other words, as Al Jazeera noted...

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Scenes from Gitmo, circa 2006

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That Florida preacher has it all wrong. See below for the complete text of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo’s standard operations procedures (SOP) on how to handle the Koran.

My fave is #4 b: "Two hands will be used at all times when handling the Koran in manner signaling respect and reverence. Care should be used so that the right hand is the primary one used to manipulate any part of the Koran due to the cultural association with the left hand. Handle the Koran as if it were a fragile piece of delicate art."

Got that?

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE JOINT TASK FORCE GUANTANAMO HEADQUARTERS, JOINT DETENTION OPERATION GROUP (JDOG)...

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Photo: 1930s Moscow show trial prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky reading an "indictment"

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If evidence in the court martial trial of Lieut. Col. Terry Lakin -- the Bronze-Star-decorated lead flight surgeon who has knowingly triggered his own court martial in his efforts to verify the Constitutional eligibility of President Obama -- might be an "embarrassment" to President Obama, the presiding judge Army Col. Denise R. Lind has in effect ruled, then there just won't be any evidence in the court martial trial of LTC Terry Lakin.

Is this really America 2010, or have we taken a time-warped detour to 1930s Soviet Union?

From WND.com:

Army Col. Denise R. Lind today [September 2] ruled in a hearing regarding the evidence to be allowed in the scheduled October court-martial of Lakin that he will be denied access to any of Obama's records as well...

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This week's syndicated column:

When President Obama said it was time to turn the page on Iraq, he should have also declared his intention to close the book on the lingering, festering injustices the U.S. government has perpetrated on 10 American veterans of the Iraq war still incarcerated in the military prison at Fort Leavenworth.

As noted in this column, these Americans are the war's forgotten men, soldiers trapped by restrictive, legalistic rules of engagement on an ultra-fluid battlefield where the enemy knew no rules. For killing this enemy and, it must also be admitted, surviving to live another day, these soldiers were sentenced to terms ranging from 10 to 40 years. In other words, for the rest of their young lives.

Allen West, himself a retired Army lieutenant colonel and veteran of both Desert Storm and the war in Iraq, has not forgotten these men. West, the Republican candidate for Congress in Florida's 22nd District, is speaking this Labor Day Weekend at the first, and, it is hoped, last Leavenworth Ten Freedom Ride, a parade past the Leavenworth military prison to draw attention to the plight of the Ten, resulting in their freedom.

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As noted in Andrew Bostom's essay debunking the just-can't-shake-it myth of Islamic "tolerance" in Muslim Spain, by the middle of the 8th century, the cathedral in Cordoba dedicated to Saint Vincent had been "converted" to a Muslim mosque. However, as 19th-century scholar of Muslim Spain (and Islamophile) Reinhart Dozy writes, this was "clearly an act of spoliation as well as an infraction of the treaty" between Cordoba Christians and the invading Arab Muslims.

All the churches in that city [Cordoba] had been destroyed except the cathedral, dedicated to Saint Vincent, but the possession of this fane [church or temple] had been guaranteed by treaty. For several years the treaty was observed; but when the population of Cordova was increased by the arrival of Syrian Arabs [i.e., Muslims], the mosques did not...

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... pull out a copy of this slam-debunking by Andrew Bostom (via Pajamas Media). The fate  of -- in fact, the ongoing struggle over -- Cordoba Cathedral (photo above, story below) is particularly illustrative.

Andrew Bostom's "The Cordoba House and the Myth of Cordoba `Ecumenism'":

Imam Feisal Rauf, “founder and visionary” of the Cordoba Initiative, apparently sees the construction of a triumphal mosque within the 9/11 World Trade Center attack’s zone of destruction as a fulfillment of his vision for Islam in America. As Rauf stated in his 2004 What’s Right with Islam, a work limited to treacly Islamic propaganda:

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From Stand-Up America, the blog of Gen. Paul Vallely (US Army ret.):

Washington, D.C., August 31, 2010.

Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney has supplied an affidavit in support of Army Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, who faces trial on October 13-15. The retired Air Force three-star is the highest ranking officer yet to lend public support to LTC Lakin. His affidavit acknowledges widespread concerns over the President’s Constitutional eligibility and demands the President release his birth records or the court authorize discovery.

McInerney’s sworn affidavit was filed in Court-Martial in support of Lakin’s motions for subpoenas for all of the president’s school records, and for a deposition of the custodian of Obama’s birth...

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