We all know the Moslem world is a political and cultural disaster zone.

All you need to know is the spectacularly low level of book sales in the Arab world, and a similarly miserable record in winning Nobel prizes, whether in literature or hard science. 

A dozen years ago, a group of Arab scholars did a report for the United Nations that ascribed the failure of Arab society to a lack of freedom, knowledge and womenpower.  And things have gotten considerably worse since 2002;  the authors could write that there were no ethnic conflicts then.  That's long gone.

Never mind failed states -  we're talking about a failed civilization, even in the most culturally advanced Moslem domain, the Islamic Republic of Iran.  The root of their failure is the War Against Fun.  They're not only failures, but grim, humorless failures.  This is the miserable common denominator of the Moslem world.

But it is a war that is being lost.

The birth certificate provided by Barack Obama is an obviously altered document, according to multiple digital forensics experts.  Have you ever wondered why such a blatant forgery was presented? 

Were the Obama handlers that incompetent?  Didn't anybody in the White House care that such a shoddy piece of photoshop work was made public?

The answer lies within our legal system. Obama and his DNC and Holder Justice lawyers are notorious for using the mechanisms of the system to gain power and abuse it, thwarting the law in the process. This is a part of their strategy.

In fact, the ongoing furor over the place of birth is exactly what Obama wants. It is a red herring, a distraction.  Here's why.

Lobbyists tend to see opportunity in what others view as calamity. I know, because I did.

During the decade I was a lobbyist in Washington, I would often examine legislation to discover hidden business opportunities. When Congress forbade an activity, some businesses would inevitably prosper providing an alternative service.

Sometimes, ambiguity in legislative language would create loophole advantages for entrepreneurs. As a lobbyist, one of my jobs was to be one step ahead of the game; to discover the opportunities created, sometimes by congressional error, and provide that valuable information to those in the business or foundation sector that could benefit.

Usually, the opportunities were minor and somewhat ambiguous, but sometimes a lobbyist would strike gold.  Last week, Chief Justice John Roberts published the lobbyist equivalent of an El Dorado treasure map.  He is now the hero of K Street.

The Main Enemy:  Islamism
Chapter V: Radical Islam Resurgent

When did Radical Islam or Islamism first come into being as a significant phenomenon internationally?

It is well-known that several strands of Moslem radicalism have existed independently in a number of geographic areas since the early decades of the twentieth century. These include:

*the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood (Ikhwan al Moslemin) founded in 1928 as a reaction to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's abolishment of the Caliphate in 1924.

*the Deobandi Islamic school in India and its proselytizing arm, the Islamic missionary movement of Tablighi Jamaat.

*the preservation and growth of the Wahhabi extremist creed under the protection of the Saudi Kingdom in Arabia in the 1930s and beyond. 

This chapter will focus primarily on Wahhabism as the primary driver of present-day Islamism, made possible by Saudi oil money.

As someone who has been privileged to attend all ten TTP Rendezvous, I hugely enjoyed the recent Victory Rendezvous in our nation's capital.  When I told Jack about "software that predicts the future," he asked me to give a presentation on it - then be sure and write it up so that all TTPers would know.

So let me tell you about a small company in Cambridge, Massachusetts called Recorded Future.  CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a Ph.D in computer science, heads a 16-man team that uses extremely efficient data mining to generate a consortium of data points with fascinating predictive power.

Here is how it works.

One of the basic contributions of France to civilization was the salon, where the most intelligent and literate of Parisian society would gather in elegant relaxation to courteously discuss any matter of interest.

The founder of the French salon was Catherine de Vivonne (1588-1665), known as the Marquise (for she was married to a French noble or Marquis) de Rambouillet.  In 1618, she began receiving guests in her salon bleu of the family home, the Hôtel de Rambouillet on the Rue St. Thomas-du-Louvre in Paris.

There were nobles like La Rochefoucauld, cardinals like Richelieu, generals, scholars, poets, artists, wits, and the most cultured ladies of French aristocracy.  There was good cheer, good manners, discussion flourished, and erudite conversation became an art.

I am in no way going to compare myself to the Marquise (or TTPers to Richelieu!), yet we may be witnessing the emergence of a salon that she might appreciate on To The Point.  I am referring to the massive response - 70 posts - to Beatles in Baghdad in our User Forum.