Faisal Islam has a very interesting report from Davos on how at least one bank no longer believes that a euro from Ireland, say, is worth the same as one from Holland or Germany. He writes that: ‘A leading European bank has begun to account for euros differentially, by nation state. That is to say, they are differentiating a risk to euros that originate in a potentially defaulting country fr...

Earlier this month, Christians were given an ultimatum by the Islamist group Boko Haram and its various affiliates to leave Northern Nigeria on pain of death. This weekend, Boko Haram struck in a series of coordinated attacks that left over 176 Christians dead and scores wounded in the northern city of Kano. The Islamists targeted several police stations and other public buildings, including the b...

How would an independent Scotland have fared during the crash? Given that the liabilities for RBS alone represent 2,500 per cent of Scotland's economic output, it's a difficult question for Alex Salmond. He replies that the banks in Scotland would have been better-regulated by wise, old him, so the problems would not have arisen. But Faisal Islam at Channel Four has unearthed a letter th...

I note with interest a PR wire sent out by the The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) boasting that they had taken down an 'anti-Islam hate site'. The site in question is Bare Naked Islam. ( h/t memeorandum) CAIR's PR wire is entitled "CAIR Asks FBI to Probe Internet Threats to Mosques" and they cite their successful attempt to have Wordpress shut the site down. Predictabl...

There is a psychological term some of you may have heard me mention before known as 'category error'. It refers to the inability to solve a problem because of the inability to name it correctly, deliberately or unconsciously. A good example can be seen here in this exchange yesterday between California Congressman Dan Kundgren, Republican Chairman of the House Administration Committee an...

Christopher Hitchens has died, after a long battle with esophageal cancer. It's ironic, in a way that Hitchens might appreciate that someone so known for his rhetoric and speaking ability would finally succumb in this way. Hitch was a long time pillar of the Left who became demonized after 9/11 because he split off from the Left's orthodoxy in two places...he realized the danger of Islam...

This is an abridged, 30 minute version of the film, "The Third Jihad", an excellent presentation of the threat radical Islam poses to America and our civilization narrated by Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, whom you may have heard mentioned on these pages before.It pays particular attention to the Muslim Brotherhood and its efforts to infiltrate and subvert American society. It's well worth the watching.

The clash between radical Islam and modernity manifesting itself in the littorals of the Indian Ocean is an interesting subject. Recently, one of my friends currently patrolling the Indian Ocean invited my attention to book on this very subject by Camille Pecastaing, a professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS. The title and cover jacket (a photo of a lone Aegis cruiser) of Jihad in the Arabian Sea are a bi...

Yesterday night's news that a senior FCO official lobbied Oxford University on behalf of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi adds more ordure to the already fetid story of Britain’s role in Colonel Gaddafi’s rehabilitation. The Woolf Inquiry into Saif’s dealings with British universities and businesses found that, 'It was made clear [to Oxford] … that the FCO would appreci...

When writing in yesterdays Observer about the capture of Saif al Islam Gaddafi, Peter Beaumont wrote, before the fall of the Gaddafi regime, the young pretender 'briefed the international media with a strange incoherent story about the NATO powers and Al Qaida conspiring to topple the regime.' (Defiant, humiliated and terrified: how Saif Gaddafi was captured) Far from this bein...