January 24, 2015 – 3:46 pm
As you have no doubt heard, there has been a revolt in Yemen, where Shi’ite rebels known as the Houthis have seized control of the levers of power. About Yemen, President Obama — who, when it comes to foreign policy and a whole lot more, has been described of late as “King Midas in reverse” […]
January 17, 2015 – 11:21 pm
Sorry to bang on, post after post, on the same topic, but the Paris attacks continue to reverberate. Our e-pal and occasional commenter David Duff, with whom we see eye to eye about most things, has posted at his excellent blog an essay by one Qanta Ahmed, a self-described “opinion-maker” who is what Western multiculturalists […]
January 15, 2015 – 1:09 am
Just a few links for tonight, from two thoughtful observers. First, a couple of items from Bill Vallicella. The first is a meditation on the “No True Scotsman” fallacy; given how much rubbish we’ve been hearing about who is and isn’t a true Muslim lately, it is timely. In the second item Bill, citing the […]
January 12, 2015 – 11:42 pm
Much has been made, in recent days, of the fact that most Muslims are not terrorists. This is true: the percentage of the world’s Muslims who engage in the active slaughter of civilians is so small as to be a rounding error. But in an open and generally unarmed society, in which the default stance […]
January 7, 2015 – 5:00 pm
By now we have all heard the awful news from Paris. Time prevents me from commenting at length just now, but my feeling is that this will be as pivotal an event as 9/11 was, if not more so. This horrific attack is not only an assault on the prevailing social philosophy of the West, […]
December 10, 2014 – 11:55 am
Yesterday’s Senate report on the CIA has sparked a lot of talk, most of it on a very shallow and very binary level. (Post on that forthcoming, when time permits.) As noted yesterday, the report is far from impartial. Several former directors and deputy directors of the CIA, who were active during the period covered […]
November 16, 2014 – 2:27 pm
Yawn… ISIS beheads another American. You know, when I was younger, that would have been a pretty big deal.
October 28, 2014 – 6:07 pm
The comedian Bill Maher has, throughout his career, been a darling of the Left. His smug and odious schtick has for years consisted of taunting and ridiculing conservatives, Republicans, Christians, and pretty much anyone who represents American traditional values. (That he chooses to do so in the coarsest and most vulgar terms imaginable only serves […]
October 23, 2014 – 11:41 pm
This just in: RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson says there’s no evidence of a link between Parliament Hill gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau and Martin Couture-Rouleau, who ran down two Canadian soldiers in Quebec on Monday. No, nothing linking these two. Can’t seem to turn up anything they might have had in common. Well, here’s one thing: they […]
October 14, 2014 – 9:02 pm
As is usually the case on Tuesdays, I’m working late, so “hie thee hence” to the Maverick Philosopher’s website, where our man Bill has put together an excellent post on this vexatious question. Better yet, Bill has opened the post to comments — a rarity these days — so if any of our liberal readers […]
October 9, 2014 – 7:32 pm
If the U.S. is going to be involved at all in the Mideast snake-pit — and it appears that it is — then there is one party that stands out as being worthy of our trust and support, namely the Kurds. They are currently being exterminated, while we shift from foot to foot, inspect our […]
September 24, 2014 – 10:12 pm
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a “must-read” on the real nature of the enemy we face.
September 15, 2014 – 1:36 pm
Speaking of the New York Times: still no mention in our “newspaper of record” about the murder of young, white Brendan Tevlin by a black jihadist. Just a local crime story, I guess. Not fit to print.
September 15, 2014 – 11:15 am
This from Jerry Coyne: If ISIS Is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition Was Not Catholic.
Saw this startling item this morning in last night’s NightWatch: Iraq: Fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) inflicted a significant defeat on Kurdish militia forces on Saturday. They killed 27 Kurds and routed them from three towns and claim to have taken control of the Mosul Dam, which supplies water […]
With a hat tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a dark and piercing essay by Richard Fernandez. The gist: the Devil has the power to make you do evil yourself in order to defeat him — and so you cannot really defeat him at all.
In case you haven’t noticed, everything’s going to hell. I can’t say that I’m surprised: in a comment a while back, for example, I wrote that the administration of “this awful man — this grotesque incompetent, this subversive fraud, this preening and malevolent narcissist, this despiser of American tradition and implacable enemy of everything the […]
Not content with Mosul, now it appears that ISIL has seized Tikrit, too. Iraq is disintegrating. Update: Not sure what to make of this…
April 20, 2014 – 11:34 pm
In a splenetic comment to an earlier post, a reader presents us with a clinical example of what I have called Cultural Immunodeficiency Virus: an AIDS-like memetic infection that attacks the social organism’s immune system, rendering it incapable of making essential discriminations — in particular, exactly those self/other distinctions that any organism must make to […]
Brandeis University has rescinded its decision to award Aayan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree at this year’s commencement. You might have thought that a Jewish liberal-arts institution that was sufficiently impressed by Ms. Ali’s advocacy of women’s rights to offer her this honor wouldn’t be put off by her outspoken criticism of a culture that […]
January 5, 2014 – 12:39 pm
Here’s a story that might get interesting. I’ll let you know.
As you may recall, during the last election cycle a staple of the Obama campaign was the braggadocious assertion that “Osama is dead, and Detroit is alive.” Our mortal enemies of the past fourteen centuries were now, we were assured, “decimated”, and “on the run”. How things change! If we take “Osama” to be a […]
A little while ago I linked to a piece by Sam Harris entitled Islam and the Misuses of Ecstasy. In it, Mr. Harris wrote: I have long struggled to understand how smart, well-educated liberals can fail to perceive the unique dangers of Islam. In The End of Faith, I argued that such people don’t know […]
This is an interesting item: even as Sunni-Shia violence is getting hotter by the day in Iraq, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s preeminent intellectual, has called on all Sunni Muslims to join the anti-Assad forces in Syria, now that Hezbollah has joined the coalition fighting for the preservation of the regime. The ancient hatreds are […]
You’ve heard the term lately, no doubt. If you’re wondering what it means, have a look here: Parking Tickets Issued on Wrecks while Stockholm Burns We read: [W]hile the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ’Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,’ Stockholm Chief […]
April 28, 2013 – 11:56 pm
The Boston bombings have set off a new round of security-tightening everywhere you look. When I went to the train station in Providence last week, I saw that passengers now have to present ID to well-armed police officers just to get to the platform; some had their bags searched. Sporting arenas are adding item after […]
Here’s a link to the latest report from the Congressional inquiry into the Benghazi fiasco and whitewash. A synopsis: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY An ongoing Congressional investigation across five House Committees concerning the events surrounding the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya has made several determinations to date, including: — Reductions of […]
April 20, 2013 – 12:12 pm
One of the stranger loose ends in the Boston bombing story is Abdul Rahman Ali Issa Al-Salimi Al-Harbi — the Saudi national, tackled at the scene, who became a “person of interest”. That “interest” quickly became apparent at the highest levels of government: President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry had hasty closed-door meetings […]
I guess we’re all feeling pretty low, now that the Sequester has gone into effect. I haven’t been paying much attention to the news since Friday (been busy arranging the canned goods down in the shelter), but if the predictions I’d been hearing have turned out to be correct, the entire nation is now unemployed, […]
February 18, 2013 – 3:08 pm
Reader JK sends along a provocative item from ABC News. The gist: the soldiers who were shot at Fort Hood by the jihadist infiltrator Nidal Hasan have been denied various benefits, including the Purple Heart, because the Defense Department refuses to define the shooting as an attack by an enemy combatant — preferring instead to […]
January 22, 2013 – 11:25 pm
Can anyone explain to me why the United States is giving Egypt two hundred tanks and sixteen F-16s? The answer should not be that “we signed an agreement that we are now honoring”. We signed that agreement with Hosni Mubarak, a man we could rely on to maintain a stable peace with our principal ally […]
January 20, 2013 – 1:01 am
Gates of Vienna is down again.
December 1, 2012 – 12:17 am
The irrepressible Pat Condell wishes us all a happy Islamophobia Awareness Month. Here.
October 28, 2012 – 2:49 pm
With a hat tip to Bill Keezer, here’s a look at the Obama administration’s increasingly routine use of kill lists and drone strikes to prosecute foreign policy. I excerpt two notable quotes from this post. The first is by its author: Benghazi illustrates the problem of the President having the authority for everything and the […]
October 27, 2012 – 10:25 pm
Here’s a story that’s making the rounds today. I have no way of assessing its veracity.
October 24, 2012 – 11:52 am
As we all know by now, the “Arab Spring” has led not to a flowering of pro-Western secular democracy, but instead has brought about a profound shift toward Islamist government throughout the region. Barry Rubin examines the President’s influence on this process, here. Hat tip: VFR.
October 11, 2012 – 10:40 am
From Danger Room, here’s a damning summary of the runup to the assault in Libya (thanks to Lokilinkster for the link). An excerpt (emphasis added): The security situation in Benghazi was “a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,’ (.pdf) said Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, the State Department’s Site Security Team commander in […]
October 10, 2012 – 10:41 pm
You’ve probably heard people mentioning Lara Logan’s blunt talk about Afghanistan last week, but you should take twenty minutes and actually watch it. It’s here. If you are informed enough, and wise enough, not to be taken in by the steady diet of lies and self-serving propaganda this administration feeds us about our Mideast adventures […]
October 10, 2012 – 11:16 am
From the Heritage Foundation, here’s a sharp video on the Obama administration’s deceitful, ass-covering response to the Benghazi attack. But hey, look  —  Big Bird!
October 2, 2012 – 1:01 pm
In the days following the lethal attack on our diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, the Obama administration doggedly clung to its story that the assault, in which a United States Ambassador was killed on U.S. soil, was an unforeseeable and spontaneous eruption of anger, caused by an unflattering video about Mohammed. This story was false, and […]
September 26, 2012 – 9:44 am
Here’s an item from Iowahawk, posted way back in 2006, that’s as relevant today as the day it was written. Update: As is this.
September 25, 2012 – 8:34 pm
We’ve been hearing a lot about free speech lately (though not nearly enough). Here’s the NYPD coming to its defense. (And responding to an assault.)
September 19, 2012 – 2:09 pm
Salman Rushdie meets God’s justice (dramatization). Early James Cameron, I think. Here.
September 19, 2012 – 9:50 am
Mohammed as Brigitte Bardot. See here. Anyone out there old enough to remember the Candid Camera theme? ♪ ♫ “It’s fun to laugh at yourself, It’s a tonic tried and true; It’s fun to look at yourself, As other people do!” Maybe instead of another Charles Martel, what we need these days is another Allen […]
September 14, 2012 – 5:21 pm
The question of the identity of the man behind this week’s most talked-about movie deepens. First there was this link from our reader Dom, then this, which came in the mail just now. Dom commented earlier that “Yahoo news is now reporting that the movie was not made by an evangelical Christian, but by a […]
September 14, 2012 – 10:07 am
There is something downright surreal about President Nero, who according to reports skipped his daily intelligence briefing on September 12th so he could sashay off to Vegas, tweeting about the Paralympics right now. Oh, and sweatshirts, too! “Winter is coming”. You got that right, pal.
September 12, 2012 – 10:23 am
Today Barack Obama, commenting on the murder of our ambassador to Libya by a Muslim mob, said this: Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, but there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence, […]
September 11, 2012 – 5:56 pm
Today is the eleventh anniversary of September 11th, 2001, when a team of Muslims, seeking martyrdom in jihad against infidels, slaughtered thousands of innocent American civilians and tore a gaping hole in the heart of the world’s greatest city. On this anniversary, a violent mob of similarly minded Islamists, enraged by a perceived insult to […]
September 10, 2012 – 9:59 am
Nobody should be surprised to learn that the security vacuum in Syria is drawing in jihadis from all over, bent on annexing new territory for the dar-al-Harb. Our reader Dom sent us this item today.
August 19, 2012 – 4:39 pm
Andrew McCarthy comments on recent developments in Egypt.