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Chinese diplomats in Syria as well as Beijing's embassy are under regular threat from rebel attacks, China's ambassador to Syria has confided to local media outlets. In an interview with the Global Times [ link at site], Zhang Xun, China's ambassador to Syria said that Beijing's embassy has increasingly been caught in the cross-hairs of fighting between rebel and government forces in recent months... Zhang said that in another attack last month, Syrian rebels fired mortar shells at President Bashar al-Assad's motorcade. They missed the Syrian leader but hit a building that was located just 10 meters from the Chinese...

The crisis in Syria ...a deadly power struggle between two bitterly opposed Muslim ideologies, Sunni and Shia. Already, the war inside Syria has resulted in 93,000 dead and 1.6 million refugees, with millions more displaced internally SNIP On one side are those who follow President Assad, who belongs to the Alawites — a splinter sect from Shia Islam. On the other are ...insurgents drawn from the majority Sunni population, some of whom have close links to the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda. SNIP The main pillars of the current Assad regime are the army, the intelligence services and the Ba’athists,...

Image that accompanied Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's audiotape announcing the creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The flag was originally al Qaeda in Iraq's banner, but has been adopted by other al Qaeda affiliated and associated groups. Image from the SITE Intelligence Group. The emir of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Abu Bakr al Baghdadi (also known as Abu Dua), has announced a new brand for his organization's efforts: the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant." The new name replaces all previous brands used by al Qaeda's affiliates in Iraq and Syria, including the...

The Al Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant, al Qaeda in Iraq's affiliate in Syria, led an assault today that resulted in the takeover of a major dam on the Euphrates River in northern Syria. Additionally, the terror group claimed credit for a suicide assault on an intelligence headquarters in the city of Palmyra. The Al Nusrah Front spearheaded today's assault on the "strategic" dam in Thawra in Raqqa province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The Nusrah Front led "other factions" of the insurgency to take control of Thawra, which "is considered one of the...

Things have certainly changed at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. From the renowned Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton getting a hearty laugh in the video above by saying, "I may not be much of a crusader, but at least I am not a Mohammedan," to the execrable, supremely arrogant Islamic supremacist pseudo-academic Caner K. Dagli, it is a steep descent indeed. (Thanks to Michael Coren for sending me the Chesterton video.) However, we are keeping the pressure on for the truth in Worcester. The Bishop of Worcester, Robert McManus, canceled my appearance at a Catholic Men's Conference in Worcester...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

Keystone must watch

Bookmark and Share Text Size A | A | A December 12, 2011 Special Dispatch No.4354 Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum of Jordan's Tahrir Party Discusses Jihad Against Germany, Pledges to Impose 'Jizya' Poll Tax on Non-Muslims, and Vows to Annihilate Israel Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheikh Ahmad Abu Quddum of the Tahrir Party in Jordan, which aired on JoSat TV on December 8, 2011. JoSat, a private Jordanian channel, is owned by businessman Riyadh Al-Huroub. His wife, Rula Al-Huroub, is the moderator on this show. Sheikh Ahmad Abu Al-Quddum is a leader of the Tahrir party in...

Ezra Levant, the King of Canadian conservatism, celebrates Earth Day...with a chain saw.Ezra Performs Tree Surgery

TORONTO • Richard Warman, Canada's top online hate-hunter and scourge of free speech advocates, offered his first public response on Monday to the online campaign against him led by conservative blogger and lawyer Ezra Levant. In court filings for a libel suit, Mr. Warman calls Mr. Levant's conduct toward him "obsessive," states he "has no respect for authority," and says it is "surprising" he is a member in good standing of the Law Society of Alberta. "Mr. Levant is in the habit of fabricating extremely serious allegations of misconduct against others," Mr. Warman states in an affidavit filed in Ontario...

MONTREAL — The federal anti-hate law that “official Jews” lobbied for and got passed has, 32 years later, backfired, sowing the seeds for political correctness, media chill and censorship that have undermined the values that define the Jewish People, says Alberta lawyer, author and activist Ezra Levant. Levant, who is Jewish, made the assertion in an Oct. 21 talk to a small audience at Beth Israel Beth Aaron Congregation about his 900-day saga of being prosecuted by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission for reprinting controversial Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in his now defunct magazine, the...

Three years ago I was the publisher of a magazine that printed pictures of some Danish cartoons of Muhammad. They were newsworthy because those cartoons sparked riots in the Muslim world that killed more than 100 people. We wanted to show our readers what all the fuss was about. But by doing so, I was charged by the government of Alberta with “hate speech,” and prosecuted for 900 days by 15 government lawyers and bureaucrats at Alberta’s human rights commission (HRC). I was finally acquitted, but not before spending $100,000 in legal fees. Funny: I thought freedom of speech, freedom...

You know the mission to denormalize Canada's corrupt and abusive human rights commissions has reached a certain level of success when the HRCs are the punchline in popular jokes -- or, in this humour column in the Globe and Mail, the basis for a whole satirical "human rights" trial: Rudolph vs. Santa. Some excerpts: In December of 2006, this rights commission was asked to investigate claims of discrimination based on physical disability with regards to a reindeer, Rudolph. ...Rudolph suffers from a facial disfigurement. ...The commission finds this case to be troubling from start to finish. Its members note with...

Michael Ignatieff’s campaign aide, Warren Kinsella, is threatening to sue me for writing about his involvement in Adscam. You can see a copy of his libel notice here. Justice John Gomery, who chaired the Judicial Inquiry into that scandal, named Kinsella more than a dozen times in his report. You can read the whole thing here – or just search for the word “Kinsella” to get to the point. On page 160 of the report, in a chapter called “Who is responsible?” Justice Gomery noted that Kinsella, then chief of staff to Public Works Minister David Dingwall, tried to steer...

After a year-long investigation, the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has rejected a complaint by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities against former Western Standard publisher Ezra Levant over his republication of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. The allegation that the February 14, 2006, issue of the now defunct magazine was likely to expose Muslims to hatred helped to spark a national debate about human rights law and free speech, and its rejection comes after similar complaints of Islamophobia against Maclean's magazine also failed. ... "I was let go because I'm in the media every day. I've been down to...

My lawyers have just received a copy of a letter from the Alberta Human Rights Commission dismissing the complaint of “discrimination” filed against me by the radical Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities. They had complained that by publishing the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in the Western Standard in February 2006, I had engaged in an illegal act. Their complaint was identical to the one filed earlier by an anti-Semitic imam named a href=http://ezralevant.com/2008/01/inside-syed-soharwardys-mosque.html>Syed Soharwardy. Soharwardy abandoned his complaint this spring. You can see Soharwardy’s complaint here; it named both me and the magazine. The Edmonton complaint named just the...

I think another lawsuit is coming my way. Today, my lawyer received this letter from a radical Muslim activist in Toronto. It's a Certificate of Registration of Copyright. He claims to have copyrighted the image of Mohammed, PBUH. In other words, it's now Mohammed, PBUH, TM. I checked it out on Industry Canada's copyright database and, sure enough, there it is: two weeks ago, Akhtar "Hector" Agha has indeed registered a "Restriction on Depiction of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)". It's right there on the government website. I'm not sure, but I think "Hector" might be looking for a royalties payment for...

The Conservative government has introduced a motion to Parliament's Justice Committee proposing an investigation into the abusive, corrupt practises of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The motion specifically refers to public "concerns" about the CHRC's "investigative techniques" and their "interpretation and application" of the section 13 thought crimes provision. The resolution, which you can read here in both official languages, was put forward by Rick Dykstra (pictured at left), the Conservative MP from St. Catherines, Ontario, with the knowledge and approval of the Justice Minister, Rob Nicholson. Here is an e-mail from Nicholson, sent to a voter just today, in...

The following press release (see below) just landed in my inbox: Apparently, the Canadian Islamic Congress is going to announce that it's seeking some kind of plea bargain with Maclean's magazine in regard to the human-rights complaint against Mark Steyn's famous 2006 article. One imagines it will be some variation on the CIC's previous demand that Maclean's publish a lengthy rebuttal by Muslim activists. Given that Maclean's editor Ken Whyte responded to that previous overture by stating that he would rather go bankrupt than publish an anti-Steyn manifesto, I would estimate the chances that the magazine accept this offer at...

Canada is a lucky nation to have men like this By Ezra Levant February 26, 2008 I sometimes get e-mails from Canadian Forces troops in Afghanistan, who are always thoughtful about the larger purpose of their mission. It's clear to me that they think and talk a lot about the moral importance of their mission. I believe they are true idealists. Of course they are: in a time of war, with a near-certainty of deployment to the front lines, it takes a very special and selfless person to volunteer to join the army. If my correspondents are any indication, our...