George Soros works to destroy the free market liberalism which allowed him to make the colossal fortune he uses to work for its destruction. He does it through a string of organizations, chiefly his Open Society Institute, whose name is Orwellian: it aims to close the open society and establish totalitarian state control.

He has done, and continues to do, much harm in and to America.

He has also done, and continues to do, much harm in and to Europe.

His ambition stretches further yet.

“His goal is a new global imperium … that will be truly totalitarian,”  Srdja Trifkovic said in an address he gave to the H. L. Mencken Club in Baltimore on October 23, 2010.

Trifkovic deplored Soros’s lavish funding for campaigns to legalize cannabis, promote euthanasia, further abortion rights, impose gun control, and abolish the death penalty; and his support for radical feminism, gay activism, and same-sex marriage.

We agree with Trifkovic that Soros has had “an enormous and hideously destructive impact” on the societies he has targeted.

But we strongly disagree with him on how Western civilization could and should be defended.

Trifkovic said:

Soros’s vision is hostile even to the most benign understanding of national or ethnic coherence. … His hatred of religion is the key. He promotes an education system that will neutralize any lingering spiritual yearnings of the young, and promote the loss of a sense of place and history already experienced by millions of Westerners, whether they are aware of that loss or not. Estranged from their parents, ignorant of their culture, ashamed of their history, millions of Westerners are already on the path of alienation that demands every imaginable form of self-indulgence, or else leads to drugs, or suicide, or conversion to Islam or some other cult.

To understand Soros it is necessary to understand globalization as a revolutionary, radical project. In the triumph of liberal capitalism, the enemies of civilization such as Soros have found the seeds of future victory for their paradigm that seeks to eradicate all traditional structures capable of resistance. The revolutionary character of the Open Society project is revealed in its relentless adherence to the mantra of Race, Gender and Sexuality. …

Religion itself is no longer, if it ever was, a “traditional structure capable of resistance” to the post-national totalitarian nightmare envisioned by Soros and the left. The left despises Western religion but promotes Islam in its human-and-civil-rights guise because it helps undermine Western freedoms born of free market liberalism. If Trifkovic believes traditional religion can defend civilization, he is wrong.

Christianity or Judaism offer nothing to counter the zeitgeist of ever-loosening social constraints. “Spirituality” is a commodity marketed variously even within the traditional religions. The last bastion of civilization – of voluntary collective polities, democracies of free people in pursuit of happiness under law – is the nation-state, constitutionally protecting the individual, regardless of his identity with any race, gender, or sexuality, against being subsumed by collective (“human”) rights and privileges.

It might be that: the legalization of pot means greater numbers of children and adults will be stuck on stupid more often than they currently are; the legalization of homosexual marriage means greater numbers have (non-procreative) sex; the legalization of abortion may result in many more dead babies, but fewer dead women. All that may disgust the very traditionally faithful, but restoring the social stigma attached to it, let alone the legal proscription, is not going to happen.

All those are individual decisions. They do not jeopardize civilization. What will bring civilization down are the post-national leftist choice architects, the people who decide carbon dioxide is a pollutant, that you must have government health care, but forfeit it if you’re fat, that international human rights preempt justice and self-defense, that governments own everything and must distribute proportionally to collectives’ demands.

The globalization of welfare government – that is the dream of the left and Soros. Insofar as traditional religions preserve the ideas of the morality of institutionalized compassion and the compulsion of individual conduct they are easily coopted by the forces of darkness. In the coming Universal State, Muslims will be allowed to continue honor-killings as a collective right, but the right of an individual – to kill in self-defense, to expect justice, to start and mind his own business, to allocate his resources as he pleases, to provide for himself and his family, to have children and to raise them, and to say what he likes to whomever he wishes – will be regulated out of existence. “Civilization” will have been redefined as “acceptable choices”. Enlightened self-interest will be knowing the difference between private (cholesterol levels) and public (carbon usage) virtue. Religion can do nothing whatsoever to stop this, only a resurgence of belief in individual liberty and the free market can. Good luck with that.

C. Gee  October 28, 2010

Obama has opened the gates of the West to the Islamic army of conquest.

By deliberately weakening the United States as the protector of the West, and encouraging Islamic dreams of world conquest with his insistent denial that there is no such thing as the ongoing jihad, he has provided an opportunity that Islam is now openly seizing.     

Until now, the jihad has been conducted against the West in two ways: violently by al-Qaida and its affiliates and imitators, and stealthily by the Muslim Brotherhood centered in Egypt and financed by Saudi Arabia.

Stealth jihad has been carried on through the establishment of mosques, schools, university departments, Muslim “cultural” and professional associations, and organizations that ingratiate themselves with Western governments by claiming representative status. All this will go on, but the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen), which has deeply penetrated the West, has recently – this last September –  declared its intention of changing its tactics and turning to violence. (The timing of the change may have something to do with the approaching death of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the homeland of the Brotherhood, where it was founded in 1928. Mubarak has consistently opposed and suppressed the organization. His successor might not be as strong, or necessarily be as antagonistic towards it.)

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood made his dramatic declaration in Arabic. This means it was not made as a piece of empty rhetoric to scare the West. It was made in all seriousness to rouse Muslims to go to war.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has endorsed [in Arabic] anti-American Jihad and pretty much every element in the al-Qaida ideology book. Since the Brotherhood is the main opposition force in Egypt and Jordan as well as the most powerful group, both politically and religiously, in the Muslim communities of Europe and North America this is pretty serious stuff.

Those are the words of Barry Rubin, who first broke the news of this important development, using the MEMRI translation of the speech – from which we quote:

The change that the [Muslim] nation seeks can only be attained through jihad and sacrifice and by raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.

Rubin writes:

Notice that jihad here is not interpreted as so often happens by liars, apologists, and the merely ignorant in the West as spiritual striving. The clear meaning is one of armed struggle.

He considers the speech to be a ”game-changer”:

This is one of those obscure Middle East events of the utmost significance that is ignored by the Western mass media, especially because they happen in Arabic, not English; by Western governments, because they don’t fit their policies; and by experts, because they don’t mesh with their preconceptions.

This explicit formulation of a revolutionary program makes it a game-changer. It should be read by every Western decisionmaker and have a direct effect on policy because this development may affect people’s lives in every Western country.  …

Rubin asks, does its endorsement of al-Qaida style anti-American jihad “mean the Egyptian, Jordanian, and all the camouflaged Muslim Brotherhood fronts in Europe and North America are going to launch terrorism as one of their affiliates, Hamas, has long done?” His answer is no.

But it does mean that something awaited for decades has happened: the Muslim Brotherhood is ready to move from the era of propaganda and base-building to one of revolutionary action. At least, its hundreds of thousands of followers are being given that signal. Some of them will engage in terrorist violence as individuals or forming splinter groups; others will redouble their efforts to seize control of their countries and turn them into safe areas for terrorists and instruments for war on the West.

In other words, we may expect a proliferation of Talibans in Islamic countries.

And we believe that within America and Europe, it will mean more terrorism. It is not necessary for every Muslim or “all the camouflaged fronts” to obey the Brotherhood’s call in order for there to be decades of terrorist attacks, which is to say decades of continual killing and maiming, random targeting, and paralyzing intimidation, because more than enough enthusiasts will answer the call. As Rubin says:

Badi’s claims do not mean all Muslims must agree, much less actively take up arms. They can have a different interpretation, simply disregard the arguments, and be too intimidated or materialistic or opportunistic to agree or to act. Yet hundreds of thousands will do so and millions will cheer them on. …

[They] sense weakness on the part of the West, especially the U.S. leaders …

In an article at Ynetnews, Moshe Dann explains how the Muslim Brotherhood has successfully infiltrated the West and how powerful its influence has become:

Through a network of educational, social, professional and cultural organizations – which, in the West, do not reveal their Muslim Brotherhood connection – they exert political influence and promote a mix of religious and political ideologies associated with the extremist Wahhabi form of Islam. Supported by Saudi Arabia, Gulf States, and wealthy Muslims, they espouse a global strategy for Islamic hegemony.

He mentions some of the most powerful Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America, including –

The Muslim Student Association (MSA,) the largest Muslim campus organization, with more than 250 chapters, was initiated by the Muslim Brotherhood. …

Brotherhood organizations, like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which grew out of the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a front group fundraising for Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorist organizations, are not outgrowths of popular, or communal expressions … but are self-appointed representatives …

With over 30 branches in North America, CAIR presents itself as the “largest Muslim civil rights organization …”  A few years ago, CAIR was included in a list of unindicted co-conspirators alleged by prosecutors to have participated in a conspiracy to illegally funnel money to Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation. [Why have they not been indicted? – JB] …

At least five of its employees and board members have been arrested, convicted, deported, or otherwise linked to terrorism-related charges and activities … CAIR has a key role in the “Wahhabi lobby” …

The Muslim American Society (MAS) … actively recruits voters, which gives it political clout. Lacking any other leadership available, MAS presents itself as the representative of the Muslim community, although many Muslims disagree and are most are not affiliated. …

With all of this information, one would think that US government officials would be concerned about the activities of Brotherhood-supported organizations. Instead, they are feted by the White House, and supported by the State Department, CIA, and even the FBI …

Will the White House, the State department, the CIA, the FBI, and the American “progressive” left as a whole ignore the Brotherhood’s calling up of its hordes to join the terrorist war against the non-Muslim world?

Almost certainly. But they’ll not be able to ignore what ensues. Unless Muhammad Badi’s order is disobeyed, which is unlikely to happen, Americans must brace themselves for an intensified terrorist war about to be waged against them in their own land.

And they must replace Obama with a president who will defend America.

An underground site deep in the Zagrod mountains of western Iran, the Imam Ali Base where Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers are stored, was struck last Tuesday, October 12, by three explosions.

According to the official report, 18 members of the Revolutionary Guards were killed and 14 were injured.

In its official statement on the incident, Tehran denied it was the result of “a terrorist attack” and claimed the explosion “was caused by a nearby fire that spread to the munitions storage area of the base.” In the same way, the regime went to great lengths to cover up the ravages wrought to their nuclear and military control systems by the Stuxnet virus – which is still at work.

Read more about it here at DebkaFile, whose own “military sources” report:

Iran’s missile arsenal and the Revolutionary Guards have … suffered a devastating blow. Worst of all, all their experts are at a loss to account for the assailants’ ability to penetrate one of Iran’s most closely guarded bases and reach deep underground to blow up the missile launchers.

The number of casualties is believed to be greater than the figure given out by Tehran.

The soldiers’ funerals took place Thursday, Oct. 14, at the same time as Ahmadinejad declared in South Lebanon that Israel was destined to “disappear”.

So far, what with Stuxnet and the explosions, it’s Iran that’s looking sick.

Europe, sick with guilt and slowly dying of the wrong cure, Socialism, its hopeless condition complicated by the infection of Islam, has been able for more than sixty years to indulge itself with sweet consolations – lavish social security benefits, early retirement, high pensions, “free” health care, long and frequent vacations, paternity leave – because strong, prosperous America was paying the big bills and guarding the door.

While Europe abused, resented, envied, denigrated, despised and mocked it, America steadfastly kept its watch. America created wealth. America paid for the defense of the West.

Then came a change. America made the terrible mistake of electing Barack Obama to the presidency.

At first Europe cheered, maliciously pleased that America would be less free, less strong, less prosperous, more like Europe itself. Envy was satisfied.

But slowly the effects of  a weakened, poorer, less free America began to be felt, first in the more vulnerable European economies – Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain – but soon to some degree in all of them. The gleeful Europeans began to feel the pinch. Lower social security handouts, shorter vacations, longer working hours and years? How could this be done to them, this sudden austerity, this deprivation? It was intolerable, outrageous. Violent protest was called for.

They had not noticed the link between their comfort and all that they despised about America.

What happens in the US elections this November is crucial, not only for America, but for the whole world.

This is the subject of an article in today’s PajamasMedia by David Solway, the Canadian columnist whose political comment is always astute and apposite. The whole column needs to be read here.

He writes, in part:

The US [is] a country struggling for its very soul and teetering on the edge of economic and political meltdown. The “culture wars” between left and right, traditionalists and post-modernists, individualists and statists, are common to every Western nation, but in America the outcome of these wars will determine the fate not only of the country but of the entire Western world. Like it or not, how it goes with America is how it goes with the rest of us.

Europe, as many believe, is almost, if not already, lost. … It could no more resist the Islamic onslaught that is demographically absorbing the continent than it could prevent itself from returning to its authoritarian past in the form of an unelected transnational bureaucracy operating out of the Berlaymont Building [which houses the European Commission, the body that undemocratically governs the European Union] … Britain is the hollow shell of a once great imperial hegemon, studded with mosques and vulnerable to shariah creep, reduced to a condition of plebeian boorishness … minus the slightest vestige of national pride and vigor — in short, a country whose prime minister takes paternity leave. …

The fact is that the remnant Lilliputian West has long depended on the Brobdingnagian stature and power of the United States to ensure its solvency, security, and ultimate survival. …

Envy and resentment of this sprawling and robust — and necessary — giant among the nations were the motivating factors. For without the brawny presence of the United States in the Hobbesian jungle of world politics, neither Europe, Britain, nor the former Commonwealth dominions … could have defended their Enlightenment heritage or relied upon their own feeble military resources to guarantee their longevity. Gratitude, however, does not come easily. Contempt and self-infatuation are far more attractive emotional reactions for the parochial accessories of the grand historical drama. All those in the West who picket American embassies, deplore American ambition, write anti-American articles, columns, editorials and books, and cry “Down with America” are precisely the sycophantic beneficiaries of American strength and munificence.

Europe … responded with unadulterated joy to the election of a statist, far left American president who apologized for American exceptionalism, adopted the socialist model of governance, pledged to reduce military expenditures, and brought his country to the brink of bankruptcy. Europeans did not realize — or did not want to acknowledge — that their “advanced” socialist experiment in welfare governance depended in large part upon American military spending for the continent’s defense, which permitted a liberated fiscal surplus to be invested in social programs, early retirement benefits, and a cradle-to-grave security network.

This is now changing. With the proposed reduction of American military spending … Barack Obama no longer looks like a godsend but a weak and untrustworthy ally — in other words, like a European — who is depriving the continent of its parasitical future.

Regrettably, it is not only Europe that faces the specter of political and economic collapse. For America itself may be entering the tragic denouement of its 234 year odyssey. The “coming darkness” was not prepared overnight …  Nevertheless, the consummation of this trajectory toward radical implosion arrived with the stunning 2008 electoral victory of Barack Obama, following hard upon the Democratic Party assuming control of both houses of Congress. …

It seems as if the country’s governing and intellectual elite has abandoned its responsibility for the preservation of America’s social and political integrity, surrendering by daily increments to the forces of dissolution both within and without its borders. America’s enemies couldn’t have planned it any better.

This is the reason that the November 2 congressional and Senate elections are absolutely critical to stopping and reversing the downward trend which Obama and the Democrats have accelerated. The momentum of calamity must be turned back and the ground prepared for a colossal changing of the guard in the presidential election of 2012. …

Allowing the Democrats to chart the infernal spiral to catastrophe is no longer a viable option. And giving Obama a second term would be terminal.

Are we now witnessing the beginning of a new assertiveness … or the hastening of precipitous decline? Is the great adventure gaining its second wind or is it merely winding down? Will the future be relinquished to an increasingly powerful China and an imminent Islamic caliphate to slug it out for world domination? Or will America shake off its ideological stupor and rise from the debris of its own making as, to our great relief, the once and future republic?

Which high-tech country might Iran turn to for help in ridding itself of the Stuxnet computer worm that is incapacitating its industrial-military complex? (See our posts A virus that might save us all, September 25, 2010, and Sound the trumpet, September 29, 2010.)

Germany? Siemens provided the systems that are under attack, but apparently will not or cannot come to the rescue.

Russia? Russians were employed to install the Siemens systems. But not only have they been unable to destroy the worm, they are now being accused of planting it, and are fleeing Iran as fast as they can.

Some of them say they hope to return when the trouble has blown over – which rather strongly indicates they were not responsible for causing it.

Here’s the latest Stuxnet-chaos news:

Dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program.

Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran’s first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus.

One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning at the beginning of last week. He refused to give his name because he and his colleagues intend to return to Iran if the trouble blows over and the detainees are quickly released after questioning.

Last Saturday, October 2, the Iranian Intelligence Minister, Heidar Moslehi, “announced that nuclear spies had been captured”, accused of sending “electronic worms through the internet”.  [Which is not how the attack was initiated according to more credible sources – JB.]

This was the first high-level Iranian admission that the Stuxnet virus had been planted by foreign elements to sabotage their entire nuclear program – and not just the Bushehr reactor. The comprehensive scale of the damage is attested to by the detention of Russian nuclear experts also at Natanz, Isfahan and Tehran. …

“Hundreds of Russian scientists, engineers and technicians were responsible for installing the Siemens control systems in Iran’s nuclear complex and other facilities which proved most vulnerable to the cyber attack”, and as they were “the only foreigners with access to these heavily guarded plants”, they are prime suspects.

If it was not the Russians who worked this most inventive and effective form of sabotage ever contrived (and we don’t believe it was), those who did can now enjoy, as an extra cause for celebration, the discomfiture of the Russians. The real saboteurs, we guess, are laughing out of sheer Schadenfreude. And while we’re well aware that Stuxnet could ultimately be a threat to ourselves – to friend as well as foe just as nuclear weapons are – for the present we’re reasonably happy that this humiliating blow has been struck at the insufferable Iranian regime.

In fact, we confess, we are laughing too, and hope our readers feel like joining in.

Why has Israel not bombed Iranian nuclear facilities? Perhaps because it doesn’t need to. Perhaps it has found another way to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability.

Instead of risking lives and aircraft and weaponry, it seems that Israelis may be crippling Iran’s nuclear industry by using their best and most reliable resource – their brains.

One thing is certain: cyber war is being waged on Iran. Whether or not it was the Israelis who devised it, an extremely destructive computer virus called STUXNET has incapacitated some 30,000 Iranian industrial computers including at least 3,000 centrifuges.

The rumor is that Israel is hitting Iran with it, in partnership with the US.

Neither Israeli nor US confirmation has been forthcoming. But neither has Israeli or US denial.

Peripheral information helps to make the rumor plausible. Israel has been able to acquire up-to-date knowledge of Iran’s nuclear secrets for some time now. Human spies were suspected. But it seems that no one had to penetrate the secret facilities. Israel, the story goes, has Iran’s most vital computers in its hands.

Here’s part of the latest report on this interesting and heartening development:

[Mahmoud] Alyaee, secretary-general of Iran’s industrial computer servers, including its nuclear facilities control systems, confirmed Saturday, Sept. 25, that 30,000 computers belonging to classified industrial units had been infected and disabled by the malicious Stuxnet virus. …

[According to] Washington and defense sources … a clandestine cyber war is being fought against Iran by the United States with elite cyber war units established by Israel. Stuxnet is believed to be the most destructive virus ever devised for attacking major industrial complexes, reactors and infrastructure. The experts say it is beyond the capabilities of private or individual hackers and could have been produced by a high-tech state like America or Israel, or its military cyber specialists.

The Iranian official said Stuxnet had been designed to strike the industrial control systems in Iran manufactured by the German Siemens and transfer classified data abroad.

The head of the Pentagon’s cyber war department, Vice Adm. Bernard McCullough said Thursday, Sept. 22, that Stuxnet had capabilities never seen before. In a briefing to the Armed Forces Committee of US Congress, he testified that it was regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated piece of Malware to date.

According to Alyaee, the virus began attacking Iranian industrial systems two months ago. He had no doubt that Iran was the victim of a cyber attack which its anti-terror computer experts had so far failed to fight. Stuxnet is powerful enough to change an entire environment, he said without elaborating. Not only has it taken control of automatic industrial systems, but has raided them for classified information and transferred the data abroad.

This admission by an Iranian official explains “how the United States and Israel intelligence agencies have been able to keep pace step by step [with] progress made in Iran’s nuclear program. Until now, Tehran attributed the leaks to Western spies using Iranian double agents.”

But if  it is true that the US is waging the cyber war, and what is more waging it in alliance with Israel, it can only be with the approval and permission of Obama – right?

Obama supporting Israel in a war against Iran? Admittedly a war without bloodshed, but still a war. This would be so plainly counter to Obama’s open-hand policy towards Iran that we remain skeptical – not of the fact that Iran is being severely hampered on its road to becoming a nuclear-armed power, nor that Israel is attacking Iran with a new kind of weapon, but that Obama wants it to happen. Sooner or later we’ll know more.

Meanwhile, all-hail great Stuxnet! – as long as the toxic terror remains in friendly hands.

Good news. Mark Steyn is back. His latest column is full of wit and wisdom – of course. Don’t miss it. Among related matters, he discusses the international scandal of the Korans that were not burnt. We expressed our view that the best thing to do with a Koran is read it, because it’s a self-incriminating text. [See our post To fight Islam don’t’ burn the Koran – read it, September 6, 2010.]

Here’s part of what Mark Steyn says about the affair:

Take this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the President of the United States to denounce him, and the Secretary of State, and the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the western world feel they have to weigh in.

Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? … Another one of Obama’s famous “teaching moments”? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the President, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where’s the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones’ First Amendment rights? …

President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. …

It is a basic rule of life that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Every time Muslims either commit violence or threatens it, we reward them by capitulating. Indeed, President Obama … General Petraeus, and all the rest are now telling Islam, you don’t have to kill anyone, you don’t even have to threaten to kill anyone. We’ll be your enforcers. We’ll demand that the most footling and insignificant of our own citizens submit to the universal jurisdiction of Islam. … The same people who tell us “Islam is a religion of peace” then turn around and tell us you have to be quiet, you have to shut up because otherwise these guys will go bananas and kill a bunch of people.

Yes. They are counseling us, instructing us, to be afraid of Islam.

Many of us would rather oppose it, fight it, defeat it, and ideally destroy it.

There is nothing in it that is good for the human race. Nothing.

Obama has stopped the prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, “a major al-Qaeda figure”, who coordinated the lethal attack on the USS Cole.

October 10 will be the 10th anniversary of the bombing.

The Washington Post reports:

The attack …  killed 17 sailors and wounded dozens when a boat packed with explosives ripped a hole in the side of the warship in the port of Aden.

In a filing this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said that “no charges are either pending or contemplated with respect to al-Nashiri in the near future.”

The statement, tucked into a motion to dismiss a petition by Nashiri’s attorneys, suggests that the prospect of further military trials for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has all but ground to a halt, much as the administration’s plan to try the accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in federal court has stalled.

Why  has the prosecution of al-Nashiri been dropped?

We hear pundits on TV saying that it is because the US “needs Yemen”.

What for?

If  Yemen is a country that requires terrorist murderers to be acquitted, why does the US have anything whatsoever to do with it?

Oh, we remember now: Yemen is an Islamic country, and the president of the United States wants the country he leads to submit, submit, submit to Islam.

Why has Israel not yet taken action to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations?

Perhaps because it has to deal with a more immediately urgent threat nearer home.

According to this report and commentary, Iran’s proxies – Syria, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza – are poised to launch another war against Israel:

Defense minister Ehud Barak’s snap nomination of OC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant as Israel’s 20th chief of staff was necessary  … to pull the high command together in view of the preparations to attack Israel gathering momentum …

The general expectation of a US-Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites has therefore faded into the background of the threatening stance currently adopted by Tehran’s allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad. …

Jerusalem is extremely concerned by the placing of four hostile military forces on the highest level of war preparedness in the last few days and are asking why. …

Syrian prime minister Naji al-Otari and Abbas Zaki, one of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ closest aides, have spoken of a “very imminent” Middle East war …

There is no telling in the Middle East when an isolated incident may not deteriorate rapidly into a major conflict when the climate is as tense as it is at present. It came dangerously close on Aug. 3, when a Lebanese army sniper shot dead an Israeli colonel precipitating a heavy exchange of fire.

Lebanon is on tenterhooks over the nine Hizballah leaders the international court inquiring into the 2005 Hariri assassination plans to summon as suspected perpetrators of the crime. Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah has given the Beirut government due notice that if his top people are surrendered to the tribunal, he will plunge the country in a civil conflict.

Hizballah, backed by Damascus, recently began accusing Israel of engineering the murder, so providing themselves with a neat pretext for going to war and avoiding facing the music.

Thursday, Aug. 19, all Syrian homeland defenses and emergency services were placed on the highest war readiness for an outbreak of hostilities without further notice. …

We don’t doubt that all this is true. But our own view – admittedly from a distance – is that a devastating blow to Iran itself would stop the cat’s paw forces dead.

What else might be staying Israel’s hand against Iran? Bullying threats and orders from anti-Israel HQ, the White House?

Yes, we suspect that’s the answer. If we ‘re right, the danger of a widespread conflagration will intensify, and the pointless charade of “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority’s powerless Abu Abbas, due to start September 2 on Obama’s insistence, can make not a jot of difference.

These days there cannot  be many states, if any, with governments free from corruption, but some are more corrupt than others. Afghanistan looks to be among the worst. Its make-believe democratic institutions, president and parliament, and the police and the military, are oiled with corruption. Bribery and extortion characterize the politics of the country. A thousand busy Americans driven by noble intentions will not easily succeed in purifying the soul of the nation or changing the Afghan way. Even John Kerry, whose noble intentions are on display though his own soul has been tainted by fibs about his military adventures, has failed to persuade President Karzai – the fellow who literally wears a mantle of power – to play nice. And though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls Karzai to inform him loftily of her “displeasure”, he continues to do it his way. This so disheartens the well-intentioned folk pursuing the counter-corruption endeavor that they are thinking of abandoning it.

This is from the Washington Post:

A close adviser to President Hamid Karzai, arrested last month on charges of soliciting a bribe, was also under investigation for allegedly providing luxury vehicles and cash to presidential allies and over telephone contacts with Taliban insurgents, according to Afghan officials familiar with the case.

The Afghan officials also said that it had been Karzai himself who intervened to win the quick release of the aide, Mohammad Zia Salehi, even after the arrest had been personally approved by the country’s attorney general. The new account suggests that the corruption case against Salehi was wider than previously known and that Karzai acted directly to secure his aide’s release. …

The intervention by Karzai came after the Afghan investigators had begun to pursue corruption cases against the aide and possibly other Karzai allies inside the presidential palace. A commission formed by Karzai after his aide was released concluded that Afghan agents who had carried out the investigation with support from U.S.-backed law enforcement units had violated Salehi’s human rights and were operating outside the constitution.

The back-and-forth revolves around the work of two American-backed Afghan task forces, one known as the Major Crimes Task Force and the other called the Sensitive Investigative Unit. It has created perhaps the most serious crisis this year in relations between Afghanistan and the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Karzai to express her displeasure with any decision that undermines anti-corruption enforcement, and Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) flew to Kabul this week with a warning to Karzai that his actions put at risk U.S. funding and congressional support for the war. …

Salehi is a Pashtun from Wardak province who heads the administration of Afghanistan’s National Security Council. Salehi has played a key role in support of Karzai’s efforts to win reconciliation with Taliban insurgents and end the war in Afghanistan. The current and former Afghan officials said he had spoken regularly by cellphone with Taliban representatives and had arranged meetings between the Karzai administration and members of the Taliban …

The Afghan officials said that the investigation had determined that Salehi had also been involved with making cash payments from a palace fund to pay off Karzai’s political supporters, and distributed gifts such as armored Land Cruisers and luxury Lexuses.

“He was one of the most trusted staff members in the palace to do special things,” said one Afghan official with direct knowledge of the case. …

One of the special things he did was to accept a bribe not to investigate bribery:

Wiretapped conversations had also produced evidence that Salehi had accepted gifts, including a car provided to his son, in return for playing a role in opposing a corruption investigation aimed at New Ansari, the nation’s largest money-transfer business, which was raided by investigators in January. “The talk on the intercepts was pretty clear that this car was intended to get Salehi to interfere with the investigation,” said a senior U.S. official who worked with Afghan anti-corruption teams. The American official said the evidence had been presented to Afghanistan’s attorney general, Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, who signed an arrest warrant for Salehi and instructed the Major Crimes Task Force, an Afghan police unit mentored by the FBI, to execute the arrest. …

On July 25 … Salehi was taken to a counternarcotics detention center in Kabul.

By 6 p.m. the same day, however, police with the Major Crimes Task Force received a second letter from Aloko, the attorney general, ordering Salehi’s release.

An Afghan official with direct knowledge of the case said that Aloko had come under “enormous pressure” from Karzai to set Salehi free. A second Afghan official with direct knowledge of the events said that Aloko “received an order from the president” that Salehi be released. …

According to the Afghan officials, corruption investigators now say they fear for the safety of their families and do not believe it is possible to convict those close to the president. They do not expect Salehi to be indicted. Some believe the two elite task forces will be disbanded.

That would be a blow to General Petraeus. Apparently he’s pinned his hopes on them, believing that the country could be “restored” to stability if only the corruption could be got rid of.

Gen. David H. Petraeus the new American commander, has made clear that he sees the effort as central to restoring stability to the country.

So the story of Salehi is not encouraging to those who still believe there is something to be won in Afghanistan. To others it bears a message of despair.