On page 330 of the 2002 book Islam and Dhimmitude, the great historian Bat Ye'or writes:

It was in the early 1970s, with the outbreak of Arab Palestinian terrorism worldwide that dhimmitude erupted on European soil through violence and death deliberately inflicted on one category: the Jews, who were singled out as in the Nazi period by their religion. Security precutions and instructions posted on synagogues and Jewish community buildings implied that being Jewish and practicing the Jewish religion in Europe might again incur the risk of death, and that the freedom of religion and freedom of thought had been restricted.

For me, reading this was an epiphany. Let me borrow from my book to explain:

So that's how it started. When I first read that passage a few months after 9/11, something clicked. I remembered a visit to Brussels in December 1990, during which I saw armed guards posted outside a city synagogue. Such security precautions in Europe, as Bat Ye'or writes, were by then routine, but it was the first time I had witnessed them. And it was only after 9/11 that I realized what they really meant: It wasn't that government authorities were preparing to target a specific, limited threat of violence to battle and eliminate it; on the contrary, the authorities were responding to an ongoing threat that reflected the permanent fact that Jewish citizens in Belgium (and elsewhere) were no longer able to exercise their religion freely. And why weren't they able to exercise their religion freely? As in the 1970s, the reason in 1990 was Arab Palestinian terrorists. In retrospect -- namely, post- 9/11 -- it seems odd that these terrorists have always been called "Arab terrorists," or "Arab Palestinian terrorists," and have never been labeled according to the animating inspiration of their religion as "Muslim" terrorists. Such coyness has buried a relevant part of the story: the Islamic context. Just as a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, it was Muslim terrorism that had come to Europe, and, as a result, Jews were worshipping, if they dared, at their own fearsome risk.

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This week's syndicated column:

Is there any interest in discovering the facts about the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman? Facts, after all, can undermine ideology. They have the power to dispel fantasy. They can put the brakes on error. They lead, sometimes, to logical conclusions. All of which means, in this particular case, that when the facts come out, they might well undermine "the cause."

We simply don't know all of the facts yet. We can say with certainty, however, that the cause is not justice, no matter what the protesters, agitators and officials say. The cause is not truth, either. The cause is social strife, division, leverage, power and -- you never know -- violence and revolution, all of it drawn and driven by an outrage-stoked engine of racial grievance.

Even if the facts of this case were to prove that Zimmerman acted in self-defense when he killed Martin -- a scenario supported by a police report obtained by the Orlando Sentinel that says Zimmerman had a bloody or broken nose and a head wound, and that an eyewitness "unequivocally" identified Zimmerman as having been under assault by Martin -- that wouldn't change the cause.

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Jerome Corsi has all the details on the latest twist on the Obama-eligibility-turned-forgery story at WND.com, the uniquely indefatigable news site advancing this amazingly, shockingly, unconscionably non-covered story. WND.com, of course, also runs my syndicated column, and thank goodness since some undetermined number of my regular outlets declined to print (spiked) last week's entry, "Silence of the Lapdogs." Stalwarts newspapers who have bucked the self-censoring trend so far range from the Galesburg, Il. Register-Mail to the Pottstown, PA Mercury (Pottstown was the hometown of John O'Hara, a favorite of mine) to the folklorically named Black Hills Pioneer and Weekly Prospecter in Spearfish, SD.

Actually, those three are the only first newspapers to show up with last week's column in the Google news search. Then again, that search engine never indicates more than a few of the roughly 100  newspapers that run the column weekly. If any readers come across the Arpaio Posse column in their local papers, I'd be interested in hearing about it (email me at: deathofthegrownup@verizon.net).

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US Army Sgt. William R. Wilson III with his mother Kim. Sgt. Wilson was gunned down on Monday, March 26, 2012, by a member of the Afghan police force. Wilson and his family have paid the ultimate price for what JCC Gen. Dempsey is now calling "the additional risk" of"partnering" with Afghan Muslims subject to jihad's call.

RIP.

Two British troops were also killed by Afghan security forces on Monday. Since I last updated my quite unofficial figures on January 20 with the murders of four French troops, seven more Americans and two Albanians were murdered by Afghan security forces. The Albanian incident, which took place on February 20, occurred as Albanian troops were accompanying a USAID team for a meeting about opening two schools and a health center, when 11 Afghan policemen opened fire. They were all arrested. ...

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Hilton Kramer, whose life work was an inspiration for seekers of light and truth, has died at age 84.

Roger Kimball writes:

It is with great sadness that I report the death of my dear friend and longtime colleague Hilton Kramer, who died early this morning, age 84 (his birthday was just two days ago). I will have more to say at The New Criterion — the magazine Hilton co-founded with the pianist Samuel Lipman in 1982 — soon.  But here let me record my deep personal and professional debt to a man who not only employed me at The New Criterion — I began writing for the magazine in 1983, joined the staff in 1989 — but who also was for me a model of everything a critic should be: independent, forthright, well-informed, and above all incorruptible. Hilton always told it exactly as he saw it, and he generally saw it with...

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"We in America know the benevolence that is at the heart of Islam." Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said in 2005 at the United States State Department's annual Ramadan dinner. (I don't know why I still bother with italics as though they actually underscore something out of the ordinary, but I do.)

"Really?" I asked in The Death of the Grown-Up. "Is that what we know? Is that what history tells us? Is that what current events tell us? Rice's speechifying ... made a wicked contrast to real live Ramadan '05 headlines," which included a Muslim suicide bombing in Hadera that killed six Israelis, Ahmadinejad's promise that "the stain of disgrace" -- meaning Israel-- would be "purged from the center of the Islamic world," weeks of Muslim rioting in Paris, "and the news that...

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The late Nancy Strait and her husband of 65 years Bob Strait. RIP. Tyrone Woodfork, 19, is their accused tormentor.

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In the hysterical main, there is no interest in the facts surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin allegedly by George Zimmerman. There is interest only in seizing the bloody hoodie, waving it as a banner of "white racism," and igniting, if possible, the surging waves of collective guilt and collective vengeance to a point of crisis, real crisis, the kind of crisis Rahm Emanuel once announced he wouldn't want to waste back in 2009, echoing the classic revolutionary call of Marxists, Communists and assorted revolutionaries that came long before he and and his dictatorial boss Obama and their assorted revolutionary-front-groups donned democratic camouflage. The only kindling missing in today's combustible combination of...

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MSM at work "covering" Sheriff Arpaio's forgery and fraud presser

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This week's syndicated column:

Warning: This column contains news of evidence of possible forgery and fraud in the long-form birth certificate of the president of the United States and – bonus – his Selective Service registration card.

I figure the warning is necessary to prevent Americans, particularly Americans who work in news media and politics, from hurting themselves on any hard, sharp facts that might poke through my discussion of what is surely the biggest scandal to emerge around the seemingly dodgy docs Barack Obama is using to verify his identity.

I refer to the logic- and history-defying news and political blackout of the March 1 press conference called in Maricopa County, Ariz., by Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse.

...

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When the BBC recently reported on the staggering fact that at least 2,823 mainly very young women were brutalized in Britain last year by their own families in so-called honor crimes, the news organizations didn't mention these crimes were perpetrated overwhelmingly if not totally by Muslims.

So noted Robin Shepherd of The Commentator (via Gates of Vienna), pointing out also that neither did Sky News mention "the religion of peace" in its account; and nor did the Right-leaning Telegraph.

Sure, this is  just another iteration of the by-now old story of critical omission of Islam made under ideological pressures, fear and self-censorship, but it's so important to sit up and take notice again. There is a  very dangerous tendency to say, What else is new? and let it go.  But such boredom or complacency marks the dead man. Gotta keep bucking and kicking and making noise: What? The parliament/Congress hasn't put a halt to Islamic immigration yet? Hasn't started drilling for oil? Are you crazy? Do you want us all living under sharia by popular (democratic) demand?

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I am still taking in the revelations from Sheriff Arpaio's Cold Case Posse investigation, which has presented evidence indicating that not only is the Obama birth certificate a computer-generated forgery, but also that Obama's Selective Service Registration Card is a forgery, too -- and not just a forgery, but a bad forgery.

Watch this:

Panetta addressing disarmed troops at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan last week

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Writing at Big Peace, Paul Hair adds a crucial point about the incident last week in Afghanistan where DefSec Panetta addressed an audience of disarmed Afghan and US troops. I initially seized on the command's desire not to offend our "Afghan allies," as conveyed in this excerpt from the New York Times: 



Marine Major General Charles “Mark” Gurganus, the new NATO International Security and Assistance Force commander for the area that covers Helmand Province, said he ordered the American and other coalition soldiers to turn in their weapons to avoid signaling that their Afghan allies can’t be trusted.

“Somebody had said we were going to have the Afghans leave their weapons outside,” said Gurganus. “I wanted the Marines to look just like our Afghan partners.”

Paul Hair, however, followed the logic of the act of disarming Afghans in the presence of an "important" American further...

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In a quite interesting piece at American Thinker built around Bill Ayers' father's mailman (who believes he long ago met Barack Obama outside the Ayers' home, where, the mailman maintains in more than one interview and in a sworn affadavit, young Obama introduced himself as a "foreign student" who was, well, going to be president), the always compelling Jack Cashill reminds us some of the gaping holes the media, the voters, just gaped at and then moved on from in the last election cycle, and what just might fill in some of the gaps.

Such informed speculation denotes a healthy curiosity and bona fide concern for country; meanwhile, the media continue to flat-line on these are other ridiculously crucial questions.

Cashill writes:





As it happens, I stumbled into my own discovery of Ayers's involvement in the writing of Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams from...

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British "Equalities Minister" Lynne Featherstone

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From the Daily Mail (via WND.com):

Reforms to allow same-sex marriage will see the words husband and wife removed from official forms, it was revealed last night.

Tax and benefits guidance and immigration documents must be rewritten so they no longer assume a married couple is a man and a woman.

And private companies will be told to overhaul paperwork and computer databases containing the words.

Marriage certificates could even be affected by the Coalition proposals, with rules possibly axing terms such as bride and bridegroom.

The reforms – promised by Prime Minister David Cameron last autumn and set out in a consultation paper launched yesterday – intend to open civil marriage to gay and lesbian couples for the first time.

A different category – religious marriage – will be reserved for male and female couples.

The proposals have triggered a furious row, with the Church of England...

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Naturally, I heartily concur with my brother-in-pens Andy McCarthy's Get Out of Afghanistan Yesterday piece today, and would like see that motto flying on a new flag by Betsy Ross.

Meanwhile, for what it's worth:

The next time Corruptocrat-and-Misogynist-in-Chief Hamid "Karzai [lashes] out again at the United States, saying he was at “the end of the rope” over the deaths of Afghan civilians at the hands of NATO forces," as the New York Times reports today, could Barack Obama throw back hard data?

According to the latest ISAF figures on the past four months, 93 percent of civilian casualties...

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The AP gets to wear a white hat today for seeing through a Pentagon deception that hid another Afghan-force-murdered American soldier -- a 22-year-old Marine, LCPL Edward J. Dycus, who was shot in the back of the head on February 1.

However, the Jackson Clarion Ledger reported this as an Afghan forces murder back in early February, which I posted here.

Still, better late than never. It's important. From the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Afghan soldier shot to death a 22-year-old Marine at an outpost in southwestern Afghanistan last month in a previously undisclosed case of apparent Afghan treachery that marked at least the seventh killing of an American military member by his supposed ally in the past six weeks, Marine officials said.

Lance Cpl. Edward J. Dycus of Greenville, Miss., was shot in the back of the head on Feb. 1 while standing guard at an Afghan-U.S. base in the Marja district of Helmand province. The exact circumstances have not been disclosed, but the Dycus...

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Received a press release yesterday from the American Islamic Leadership Coalition (AILC) condemning the murders of 16 Afghan civilians by a US Army Staff Seregeant.

Nothing earthshaking there. But in distinguishing between the systemic use of unrelenting violence against innocents by "Islamists," and the actions of the US military to "punish" the aberrant crime of an apparently battle-broken soldier, the group, which is significant for staking out a claim to a moderate Islam (unsupported by authoritative mainstream Islamic texts), ventures into might disturbing mental territory.

Yet despite this vivid distinction between Islamist extremists and the U.S. military—which seeks to minimize and prevent civilian casualties in a war zone—we should not lose sight of the possibility that the brutal murders committed in the village of Balandai may represent another manifestation of the “Breivik syndrome,” in which an individual commits a horrific act of violence motivated by intensely anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim...

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From CBN via Vlad.

If you watch this video, be sure the razor blades  are locked away. It's that bad. Of course, with or without razor blades the West is committing suicide. Must it? Must we? Is there no choice but the ruin, the loss, the extinction of indigenous European cultures amid the demographic onslaught of totalitarian Islam? Submit and die seems to be the postmodern prognosis. Survival itself has become an offense, an affront, a dirty word. Hence the failure of Western societies even to attempt to control their borders and halt all further Islamic immigration as a minimal safeguard of democratically protected liberty. But such an Islam-prohibitve immigration policy ia a must. So, too, is energy independence -- another achievable goal fecklessly ignored by every US president since Nixon. So, too, is outlawing sharia as a source of Western law. So, too, is rejecting petro-dollars and sharia-compliant financial practices.... The list of measures to take to prevent the Islamization of...

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Lawyer James Culp with his client Pfc. David Lawrence, May 25, 2011

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I got to know James Culp, a lawyer who specializes in military defense cases, a little bit around the time he was defending  Sgt. Evan Vela, whom I have written about many times. After news broke about an Army Staff Sergeant who allegedly walked off base in Afghanistan and murdered 16 Afghans last weekend, I thought of Jim partly because the Army Staff Sergeant, on his first deployment in Afghanistan after three deployments in Iraq, was said to have suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, which may or may not have had anything to do with his alleged action. The last case of Culp's I followed concerned Pfc. David Lawrence, a young soldier suffering from mental problems (PTSD and schizophrenia), who was nonetheless prosecuted for murder of a Taliban commmander in US custody -- even though he had sought help from...

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From the New York Times:

In a sign of the nervousness surrounding Mr. Panetta’s trip, the Marines and other troops who were waiting in a tent for the defense secretary to speak were abruptly asked by their commander to get up, place their weapons — M-16 and M-4 automatic rifles and 9-mm pistols — outside the tent and then return unarmed. The commander, Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall, told reporters he was acting on orders from superiors.

“All I know is, I was told to get the weapons out,” he said. Asked why, he replied, “Somebody got itchy, that’s all I’ve got to say. Somebody got itchy; we just adjust.”

Normally, American forces in Afghanistan keep their weapons with them when the defense secretary visits and speaks to them. The Afghans in the tent waiting for Mr. Panetta were not armed to begin with, as is typical.

Later, American officials said that the top commander in Helmand, Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, had decided on Tuesday that no one would be armed while Mr. Panetta spoke to them, but the word did not reach those in charge in the tent until shortly before Mr. Panetta was due to arrive.

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Illustration by Pat Crowley

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...Pravda, historically the organ of the USSR Communist Party, now an online paper of the same, sinister-storied name, can comment on the stunning lack of media oxygen given to further evidence, as marshaled by Arizona Sheriff  Joe Arpaio and his Cold Case Posse, that President Obama is an identity thief.

From, yes, Pravda:

A singularly remarkable event has taken place in the United States of America. This event occurred in Arizona on March 1st and was an earth shattering revelation.

A long awaited press conference was given by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a five time elected Sheriff, which should have made national and international headlines....

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I first posted this heart-warming April 1945 photograph of Canadian-liberated Zwolle, Netherlands last year. I'm posting it again because the point I raised then is at least as relevant today, particularly in light of the tragic and completely aberrational incident in which an Army Staff Sergeant apparently walked off base and shot and killed t6 Afghan civilians.

Last year, I wrote:

Between 1940 and 1945, 128 known air raids were carried out by Allied forces on German-occupied Rotterdam  in the Netherlands, killing 884 civilians  and wounding 631. I mention this wondering whether Admiral Mullen ever ponders just why it was that Allied Forces in Europe were greeted as liberators in a war that caused millions of civilian casualties.

...

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Monarchical Qataris taking measure of Buckingham Palace for future tent, or so it seems from the Daily Mail report: How Qatar bought Britain.

The media are dead. Walter Jones, a long-serving Republican Congressman from North Carolina, introduces the following resolution on March 7, 2012, putting the President of the United States on notice that military action in Syria without "prior and clear authorization" from Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor, and the media don't mention it.

The Bill Text follows:

H.CON.RES.107 -- Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high... (Introduced in House - IH) HCON 107 IH 112th CONGRESS 2d Session H. CON. RES. 107 Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a President without prior and clear authorization of an Act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under article II, section 4 of the Constitution. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES March 7, 2012 Mr....

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Conclusion? No, it's the end.

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Almost exactly one year ago, I came across the ISAF website headline,  "The Religious Importance of the Qu'ran," I wrote:

As a well-known sucker for the religious importance of the "Qur'an" -- I prefer "Ko-ran," with Texas inflection -- I just had to click and see.

The caption tells us so-and-so holds his prayers beads during a March 2010 ribbon-cutting ceremony on an electrification project in the Farah Distriction, quoting Mr. So-and-So as saying: "If we have electricity ... we can turn on our lights, and read the Koran.”

What comment is appropriate here? "The jaw drops"? "The universe spins"? We must go beyond shock to assess the advanced state of psycho-masochism...

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This week's syndicated column:

This week, a bombshell wrapped in an SOS landed on the desk of the inspector general at the Pentagon.

The SOS was a legal complaint from attorney Mark L. Waple. It called for an investigation into whether the Marine Corps was attempting to drive Waple's client, Marine Corps Maj. Fred C. Galvin, from the service through what is known as a "board of inquiry" in retribution for Galvin's legally protected communications with Congress regarding an incident last year in Afghanistan. Such a reprisal, Waple charges, would violate the Military Whistleblower Protection Act.

Even as I was preparing to file this column, the board of inquiry concluded there was no cause to force Galvin, whose 24-year career includes a Bronze Star and five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Marine Corps.

But that still leaves the bombshell.

I'm referring to the letters, sworn statements, reports, even a certified polygraph test result, that sit inside the complaint still at the Pentagon. The documents attest to the incident Galvin witnessed and communicated to members of Congress, among them Republican Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Allen West of Florida.

...

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... the quote the day comes out of International Women's Day, one of those faux, globaloney-istic markers of Our One World. As officials "attempted to highlight apparent progress" by women in post-Saddam Iraq, AFP reported that Iraqi women criticized the restrictions "society"  -- Islamic society -- placed on them, ranging from forced marriage to restrictions on education and clothing, all compatible with sharia (Islamic law).

Said one woman: "This is not freedom, this is darkness."

In fact, as Andrew Bostom noted in an email this a.m., such darkness is "hurriyya" -- Islamic freedom. Explanation here.

Up the Syrian rebels?

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Heard about caliphate flags over Syria, latest Arab Springlet to fever the fancy of the neo-McCoins? No?

John Rosenthal, thankfully, reports at NRO:

On Monday, in calling for airstrikes on Syria, Senator John McCain reprised much the same role he played one year ago at the outset of the Libyan war. Last April, during a highly publicized visit to the cradle of the Libyan rebellion in Benghazi, Senator McCain called for increased American military support for the Libyan rebels. The senator famously described the rebels as his “heroes.” Never mind that these “heroes” had been caught on video committing horrific atrocities, nor that one of their commanders had openly acknowledged his ties to al-Qaeda. At the...

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The articles of the Afghanistan constitution open as follows:

Article One Ch. 1. Art. 1

Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.

Article Two Ch. 1, Art. 2

The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam.

Followers of other religions are free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of law.

Hmm. What law is that?

Answer: Sharia (Islamic law). Behold:

Article Three Ch. 1, Art. 3

In Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.

Bingo. Right there, in bold, in the constitution of Afghanistan, written under Uncle Sucker's nose and auspices,  Islamic law is enshrined above all: No law -- zero -- can be contrary to "beliefs and provisions" of Islam...

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Associate Attorney General Tony West: "I  truly believe John ["American Taliban" Walker Lindh] will have a lot to offer after his incarceration." How about a spot on Tony-West-sponsored "Al Qaeda Bar" at Justice?

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Just as Koran-Burning Rage 2012 must not be seen as an isolated event, but rather as a cycle of sharia ascendancy, or, as indicated in my last column, another notch in our decline into dhimmitude, so, too, the advance of  a leading member of the  "al Qaeda bar" into the highest reaches of the Department of Justice must not be seen as just one more signularly noxious incident in the life of our nation's capital. This, too, is part of the tectonic shift under way.

Over at Pajamas Media,...

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In the interest of adding two cents on Syria, I quote the admirable Andy McCarthy, who, thankfully, has done the heavy lifting to arrive at the all-important bottom line concerning whether the United States should become involved (NO). Having established the bona fides of the "Syrian opposition" as True Enemies of American National Interest equivalent to Assad  -- just look at the oppo and its boosters, from the Muslim Brotherhood to Qaradawi to Zawaheri to Hamas (to those diehard "Arab Spring" enthusiasts at the Foreign Policy Institute and Foundation for Defense of Democracies) -- McCarthy writes:

When America’s enemies face off against each other, it is not in our interest to choose one over the other. As they battle, they weaken each other — and that has already had the salutary effect of weakening Iran, which now sees not only Assad teetering but its tenuous ties with Hamas fraying.

Of course it...

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Sara Carter of the Washington Examiner reports on stirrings of responsibility in Congress (via VFR):

Since 2007, roughly 70 American troops have been killed by Afghan Security Forces in what is described by the U.S. military as ‘Green on Blue attacks.’ [Rep. Frank] Wolf said he is concerned with the growing danger faced by U.S. troops as the drawdown is underway, and called for a Congressional study of the problem. “We owe the men and women who are serving, to those who have given their lives. We need a fresh set of eyes on the situation,” he said.

It's about time.

Several U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan told the Examiner that the true number of attacks on Americans by their presumed Afghan allies was drastically underreported. Numerous incidents of Afghan forces firing on NATO troops...

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The AP reports:

A trend of Afghan treachery that has taken the lives of six American troops over the past week is poisoning a key ingredient in the international coalition's formula for winding down the decade-long war: trust.

Not just "a" key ingredient. "Trust," according to former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, is the "coin of the realm" in Afghanistan. "Lose the people's trust," he wrote in early 2009, "and we lose the war." That was non-sense then and it is non-sense now. It is little wonder, then, that the COIN war the US has led all these year in pursuit of Afghan trust has failed so miserably. 

Why? From the archive, February 19, 2009:



The buzzword on Afghanistan is "trust." Having routed the Taliban, liberated millions, midwived a (Sharia-supreme) constitution, assisted in elections, propped up a government and routed the Taliban some more, all the United States needs now to win victory in Afghanistan is to win the "trust" of the Afghan people.

...

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Jan Kubis (L), the U.N. dhimmi of 2012, is not to be confused with Jan Kubis (R), the resistance fighter who helped assassinate SS Obengruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich.in 1942.

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This week's syndicated column.

Six U.S. military men have been murdered by Afghan security forces seized by what may be labeled Koran-Burning Rage.

Koran-Burning Rage follows Pastor Jones Rage, which, after a Florida pastor burned a Quran in 2011, seized Afghan Muslims and inspired rioting. Some rioters overran a United Nations outpost and murdered seven U.N. personnel.

Pastor Jones Rage followed "Fitna" Rage, which seized Muslims worldwide even before the release of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders' short 2008 film "Fitna." That film sparked rioting, arson, boycotts, death threats and, as a bonus, charges that led to the protracted trial in the Netherlands of Wilders for "insulting Muslims." (He was acquitted in 2011.)

...

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Two more American troops murdered today in Afghanistan as the UN joins forces with Karzai and the Koran Jihad by calling for "disciplinary action" against the soldiers who disposed of Korans last month.

In other words, the dhimmi of the world are uniting to turn the Islamic screws on the USA. And the USA has absolutely no clue what is happening.

From Reuters:

The United Nations joined Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday in calling on the U.S. military to take disciplinary action against those who burned copies of the Koran at a NATO air base, calling the incident a "grave mistake". Despite an apology from U.S. President Barack Obama, the burning of the Muslim holy book at the Bagram base north of the capital ignited a wave of anti-Western fury across the country. At least 30 people were killed in protests, including two American soldiers who were killed by an Afghan soldier who joined the demonstrations.

By my count, at least six Americans have been killed in this latest...

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Fox News' Bret Baier reported the Hamza Kashgari story in brief on February 20, giving it little more three tweet's worth of space (the amount of Kashgari's "blasphemous" material):

Baier said:



Finally, a young Saudi blogger has been sent back to his homeland to face trial and possible execution triggered by comments he made on Twitter that were seen as blasphemous against the Prophet Mohammed





The smooth passive voice eliminates state actors and state religion





Hamza Kashgari has apologized for sending three tweets of a fictional conversation with the prophet Mohammed that quickly sparked thousands of angry responses and even death threats.





No official reaction from the Saudi government.



 





Gee, did they even have anything to do with it?











U.S. human rights groups have asked the State Department to intervene.



...

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I’ve got it.

After all these years of official stumbling over what to call the mission the United States has spearheaded in the Islamic world in response to the 9/11 attacks, I’ve come up with a name – not to brag or anything – that I believe brings much-needed clarity to our cause.

We’ve come a long way since the days of the Global War on Terror. Frankly, the GWOT – whatever that was supposed to mean (how do you fight against a tactic?) – is so 10-years-ago. “Terror,” meanwhile, has morphed into “extremism,” but that’s only made things more unclear. We still don’t know what it’s all supposed to be about.

Until today.

Mr. and Mrs. America, boys and girls, welcome to the Global War on Koran-Burning, as led by the United States Masochists To Make the World Safe for Shariah (Islamic law).

If a column could...

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This week's syndicated column:

One thing I’ve learned while researching my new, nearly finished book is that both history and news, history’s so-called rough draft, are not written by the “victors” as much as they are censored, twisted and reconfigured by what I can best describe as “the mob.”

I’m not referring to the Mafia. What I’m talking about is a mob-like amalgam of sharp elbows and big mouths who dictate acceptable topics, their narrative flow and an approved range of opinion – the consensus-makers. Defying consensus, breaking what amount to Mafia-like vows of “omerta” – silence – and delving into the verboten, is the worst possible crime of anti-mobness, punishable by eternal hooting and marginalization.

Few transgress. Which explains the news blackout on an extraordinary chain of recent events that took place in and...

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Like a postmodern-day ziggurat, the $750 million US Embassy in Iraq stands as a grotesque symbol of Washington hubris, not to mention dumbness. It is now practically approaching white elephant status, according to a New York Times report, but not soon enough. Meanwhile, things are getting ugly at the embassy salad bar ....

The Times reports:

Less than two months after American troops left, the State Department is preparing to slash by as much as half the enormous diplomatic presence it had planned for Iraq, a sharp sign of declining American influence in the country.

Officials in Baghdad and Washington said that Ambassador James F. Jeffrey...

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For years now, we've watched an increasingly totalitarian Europe arise in the courtrooms of infamous speech trials in Holland, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, France, England and elsewhere as dictatorial government authorities use the courts to maintain their political power against political rivals and freethinkers who dare call out the dishonesty and deceptions of the State. With the speech trial today of a fabled and elderly parfumier in Paris (described below), however, we see a strain of totalitarianism that is qualitatively different but equally sinister.

When parfumier Jean-Paul Guerlain (picture above) told an TV interviewer in 2010 that in order to create the popular perfume Samsara ("blends notes of ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, and tonka bean") "for once, [he] started working like a negro," he threatened no government power structure, he called out no deception. He made a banal comment, simply not worth parsing although it's hard to resist noting that he chose the simile to convey something he is obviously proud of --  a sustained and apparently arduous effort to create something beaitiful. But that is utterly and completely beside the point: The French state here is more and more inserting itself into the regulation of its citizens' minds, not in an overt attempt to maintain political power (Wilders, Dewinter), not to destroy facts and principles that threaten its fabrications (Sabaditsch-Wolff, Hedegaard, Robinson), but rather, in the evil tradition of Communism's relentless social engineers, to rewire all thought processes down to the most trivial. It is the totalitarian effort to create the New Man.

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