The end of the world takes second place to a photo-opportunity for President Obama

Michael Ledeen does what few other commentators are doing by joining up the dots – and thus correctly assesses the true and terrifying reality of the threat facing the free world:

There is a mounting body of evidence of a global alliance directed against the United States, running from Moscow to Tehran, Damascus and Caracas.  United by hatred of America, funded by oil and narcotics revenues (including our own), and unanimous in their contempt for free societies, the leaders of Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Bolivia publicly declare their intentions and demonstrate their resolve.  Manhattan District Attorney, the legendary Robert Morgenthau recently spoke of the Iranian-Venezuelan collaboration in very stark terms: ‘[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez have created a cozy financial, political and military partnership rooted in a shared anti-American animus.’

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The second tier of influence goes under the bus at midnight

A few days ago Van Jones, President Barack Obama's adviser on ‘green jobs,’ resigned his post -- apparently in the middle of the night during the Labour Day holiday weekend -- after a series of astonishing comments he had made came to light. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Mr. Jones has been in the center of a maelstrom on conservative radio and television talk shows since a video surfaced last week showing him calling Republicans a vulgar epithet. Since then, other controversies have emerged, such as Mr. Jones saying black students would have never committed a massacre such as the one at Colorado’s Columbine High School. His name also appeared on a 2004 petition calling for the government to investigate its own culpability in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In line with their deeply principled doctrine...

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BBC Newsnight plumbs new depths of bigotry

I have just caught up with a quite disgusting item by Katya Adler, transmitted on Monday evening's Newsnight, on military rabbis in the Israel Defence Force. She presented as deeply shocking the fact that these rabbis are trained officers who carry arms and are now deployed in the front line of combat. Worse still, they actually seek to inspire and fortify Israeli soldiers by using the Jewish religion and the words of the Hebrew Bible! How shocking is that?! No mention of the fact that the British army has military chaplains who are also officers. True, they don’t bear arms – although some chaplains in Afghanistan are now saying they think that should change because it is too dangerous not to when on a battlefield that is far more lethal to them than any other on which they...

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The airline plot denouement raises yet more questions about Londonistan

According to press reports, yesterday’s convictions of three young British Muslims in the al Qaeda transatlantic airline plot terrorist trial in London have been hailed as a ‘triumph’ and an ‘enormous relief’ by the political and security establishment. Really? They shouldn’t break out the champagne just yet.

For sure, if there had been no convictions it would have been an absolute disaster of the first magnitude. Many in Britain even now remain unwilling to believe the true nature and seriousness of the Islamic terrorist threat to the UK. With the belief that ‘we were taken to war in Iraq on a lie’ having become the received wisdom, warnings by the security world of the grievous threat still posed by al Qaeda and its affiliates, working through an estimated two to four thousand radicalised young British Muslims, are often...

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The attack on Camp Ashraf

I wrote here about the attack at the end of July by Iraqi forces against the Iranian opposition group the People’s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran (PMOI) at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, which led to the death of 11 Ashraf residents and the injury of 500 others.

Since then, the camp has remained under siege by Iraqi forces, some 36 residents are being held hostage and Iranians are staging hunger strikes and sit-ins in cities around the world, including in  Britain and America -- with some hunger-strikers now reported to be in a critical condition. This is in protest against the attack and in an attempt to regain the protection of the US which has handed over reponsibility for that protection to the Iraqis – the very people who are responsible for the attack and siege.

This affair raises not just...

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Oxford's latest prize

Tariq Ramadan, the darling of the British political and security establishment which foolishly and ignorantly believes his aim is to modernise Islam whereas his actual agenda is to Islamise modernity, has for some years been referred to as an Oxford professor. This was not actually true; he was not a professor at Oxford University but a mere research fellow of St Anthony’s College, Oxford. But now the wish has become father to the deed. In the depths of the long vacation, the Oxford University Gazette announced that Ramadan had been appointed

His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies with effect from 1 October 2009.

Gratified as I’m sure everyone will be to hear that Tariq Ramadan (who was barred from the USA in 2004 and...

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