The Iconoclast

I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles... ...Read More...

by Conrad Black Canada is suffering from a prolonged drought of imaginative government. Since Stephen Harper bucked an otherwise universal international trend and reduced HST, and durably shrunk, as he hoped, the public sector share of the Canadian economy, our federal legislators have under-achieved. ...Read More...

by Michael Curtis That face, that beautiful face, is now a center of amusement in Paris. For centuries that city has been the world center for style and elegance for women. It's about time that men, especially politicians, displayed an attractive public image and are ready for their close up. ...Read More...

by Tom Harb Back in November, and after President Trump won the election and formed his transition team, a few opposition media, notably including al Jazeera and Politico, launched acerbic attacks against then Trump foreign policy advisor Dr. Walid Phares without reason. The attacks were most ...Read More...

From Sky News A man tackled by police near Buckingham Palace was armed with a 4ft sword and repeatedly shouted "Allahu Akbar" - God is greatest - during the struggle, Scotland Yard has said. The force has revealed the suspect drove a blue Toyota Prius "deliberately" at a marked patrol car before ...Read More...

by Gary Fouse Listening to some of the silly comments coming out of Wednesday's Colin Kaepernick protest in front of the NFL offices in New York made me laugh. One would have thought that the out of work quarterback was Joan of Arc, Jackie Robinson and Jesus Christ all wrapped into one. He is ...Read More...

HuffPo reports the chief of staff General Kelly revoked his security clearance while he was on vacation. Mollie Hemingway writes at The Federalist: Sebastian Gorka is resigning his post as Deputy Assistant to President Trump, multiple sources familiar with the situation have told The Federalist. In ...Read More...

From the Sun SUPERMARKET giant Aldi has been praised after a checkout worker "raised concerns" about selling alcohol at their till. The sign at the end of one of the conveyor belts in the Northampton store stated: "No alcohol is able to be served on this till. Sorry for any inconvenience."  Customers ...Read More...

Overnight the weapon which was first described as a 'sword', then was played down as a mere 'knife' is now being described as a 'large bladed weapon', so NOT something a normal person might carry for trimming knitting yarn or peeling fruit. And there is also confirmation that he has been arrested under ...Read More...

It's all happening tonight. It's a Friday. The moon is new... From the Telegraph A man has been arrested after attacking police outside Buckingham Palace. There were reports the man had a sword. Two officers were injured when restraining the suspect. There was a heavy police presence outside ...Read More...

From Sky News State broadcaster RTBF reported the man had attacked two soldiers with a knife in Boulevard Emile Jacqmain. Belgian prosecutors said the suspect was still alive, but in a critical condition. RTBF reported the suspect was a Somali man who is alleged to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" ...Read More...

by Hugh Fitzgerald “With ‘Ask A Muslim Anything’ Events, N.H. Man Hopes To Tackle Misunderstandings Around His Faith” is the title of a recent report at WBUR, which you can find here. So here we are again, with one more of those Ask-a-Muslim-Anything Defenders of the Faith. There is a piquant ...Read More...

by Sherkoh Abbas and Robert Sklaroff President Trump’s itinerary during his first overseas trip revealed both his goal and its attendant strategy—although it remains officially unstated—as he tries to fashion a durable end to the Syrian civil war and the birth of a restructured region. In ...Read More...

From the Telegraph The Islamic State terrorist group has released a new video calling on Muslim extremists in Southeast Asia to wage holy war in the besieged Philippine city of Marawi, while denouncing America and Australia for aiding the country’s military. Its release comes as the battle between ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Recently, Amsterdam’s city council forbade the use of the locution “Ladies and Gentlemen” within its halls and precincts. This was not in the interests of strict accuracy: Many women, after all, are not ladies, and many men are not gentlemen. Rather, it was to avoid upsetting ...Read More...

From Swiss Info A Libyan Imam who received Swiss welfare and preached messages of hatred has lost his asylum status. Local authorities are looking into deporting him. Because Abu Ramadan has a Libyan passport and has made several trips to Libya since his arrival in 1998, the migration authorities ...Read More...

The cover of today's edition of Charlie Hebdo isn't going to go down well in some quarters.  Al Jazeera isn't impressed and they have copied the tweet-tweet comments of all manner of writers for the Guardian and similar.  We were expecting it. Another Charlie Hebdo cover to incite anti-Muslim ...Read More...

Take your best gal, your real pal and go down to the levee...   ...Read More...

His enemies have lost their senses. by Conrad Black The whole world is astounded and distressed at the incivility of American public discourse. Not since Senator Joseph R. McCarthy accused President Dwight Eisenhower, former president Harry Truman, and the late president Franklin D. Roosevelt ...Read More...

by Michael Curtis Every schoolchild knows that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. He and his men sailed in La Pinta, La Nina, and the Santa Maria. They may also know that his contemporaries all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round. But who's got the last laugh ...Read More...

No doubt influenced by National Security Advisor McMaster, whose views on this matter have become well-known, President Trump used the generic word "terrorists" to describe our enemies in Afghanistan. This is a major mistake in my opinion. "Terrorists" implies they employ terror for terror's sake. This ...Read More...

by Michael Curtis Gerard Depardieu as Rasputin One of history’s most diverting misunderstandings that long stand uncorrected is the alleged remark in 1972 by Chinese Prime Minister Chou Enlai to President Richard Nixon. Asked what he thought about the 1789 French Revolution, Chou is said to ...Read More...

by Richard Kostelanetz Piecing together bits drawn from various sources, I gather that some white supremacist group got a permit to stage a demonstration. Once this was granted, the remnant of Black Lives Matter decided, along with allied gangs, to mobilize a counter demonstration. This setup ...Read More...

From the Spanish edition of The Local The death toll in Spain's terror attacks has risen to 15, Catalonia's regional minister Joaquim Forn said Monday, as a man found stabbed dead in a car outside Barcelona was linked to the case. "We are raising the number of victims from 14 to 15 to include ...Read More...

Sky News is reporting on their 24 hour TV programme that a man wearing a suicide belt has been shot dead in the town of Subirats west of Barcelona this afternoon. The Express has the bare headline on-line.  Meanwhile Sky is also reporting that the driver of the van who was on the run has been arrested ...Read More...