Posted by John Rosenthal

Just two days before last Sunday’s presidential elections, news broke that French judicial authorities are contemplating bringing rape charges against former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in connection with the so-called Carlton Affair. Strauss-Kahn has hitherto “merely” been under investigation for aiding and abetting the organization of a prostitution ring in connection with the affair, which revolves around a series of “sex parties” with prostitutes that were organized for his benefit.

The most recent revelations have received some limited coverage in the American news media: notably, in the form of a short article in the New York Times. But the Times report is sparse on details, coy and linguistically-challenged to boot.

For a more complete picture, including translated excerpts from the statements of Strauss-Kahn’s accuser, see my new article at the Weekly Standard online here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

While the Obama administration’s burgeoning contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt continue to cause controversy, the administration’s policy of growing cooperation with the Syrian opposition continues to enjoy almost unanimous support. This is remarkable, since by virtue of that policy the administration is openly allied with none other than the Muslim Brotherhood: openly, that is, but with perhaps just enough misdirection for the alliance to escape the notice of the broader public…

Since my new article on National Review Online here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

The French Syria specialist Frédéric Pichon accuses the Western media of irresponsibility in its treatment of the Syria crisis: of being ignorant about the region and its history, neglecting to verify sources, blithely parroting activist talking points–in short, of “refusing to deal with the reality.”

See my new interview with him on Breitbart.com here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

As the magazine Le Courrier de l’Atlas has reported, thousands of Islamists, “the majority of them Salafis,” demonstrated in front of the constituent national assembly in Tunis last Friday, in order to demand that the sharia be recognized in the future Tunisian constitution as the fundamental source of the law. Images of the demonstration show that many demonstrators were waving al Qaeda’s distinctive black flag…

See my new post at The Corner on NRO here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

Last night, a Shia mosque in Brussels was the target of an arson attack. The 46-year-old imam of the mosque died of asphyxiation during the fire. While the wire services have reported the attack, most of the reports have ignored a salient detail: according to eyewitnesses, the perpetrator was a Salafist who shouted slogans regarding the conflict in Syria…

See my new report at The Corner on NRO here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

The Obama administration has conceded al-Qaeda’s involvement in the Syrian rebellion, suggesting last month that the terror group had “infiltrated” the opposition to Bashar al-Assad. But video evidence emerging out of Syria suggests that “infiltration” is not the word. At least three such videos depict anti-Assad forces or demonstrators with al-Qaeda’s black flag. Numerous other videos show demonstrators with black and white “caliphate” flags.

For the images and corroborating evidence, see my new article at National Review Online here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

Earlier this month, the French daily Libération published an interview with Sheikh Louay al-Zouabi, a self-avowed Salafist imam from Daraa, Syria, who claims to have issued a fatwa that sparked the uprising against the rule of Bashar al-Assad.

A radical fundamentalist current in Islam, Salafism advocates the emulation of the Salaf: the earliest generations of Muhammad’s companions and followers. It is the same form of Islam as that embraced by al-Qaeda, to whose ideas al-Zouabi has elsewhere unabashedly said he adheres. “I am al-Qaeda,” al-Zouabi has said.

For the details, see my new report on the website of the Stonegate Institute here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

Today is the official anniversary of the “February 17th Revolution,” the Libyan rebellion against the rule of Moammar Qaddafi that — with a massive helping hand from NATO — eventually led to the fall of the regime and the death of Qaddafi. Although the rebellion was initially presented in the Western news media as a “protest movement,” it is clear from both video evidence and firsthand accounts that the “protests” were extremely violent from the start.

Moreover, little known evidence from a British terror trial indicates that there was nothing spontaneous about the violence. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group had a longstanding plan to topple the Qaddafi regime by using just those methods that would be employed by “protestors” and rebels one year ago…

See my new article at National Review Online here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

Arid Uka, the 22-year-old Kosovo native who shot and killed two American airmen at the Frankfurt airport in March of last year, was sentenced to life in prison by a German court on Friday. Despite the terminology, however, a “life” sentence in Germany does not in fact mean life, and Uka could be set free as early as 2028.

Consider, for instance, the precedent of Red Army Faction terrorist Birgit Hogefeld. In 1996, Hogefeld was convicted by the very same court of the murder of two American servicemen and an American civilian. Today, she is free on parole.

For the details, see my new article at the Weekly Standard online here.

Posted by John Rosenthal

In a decision that has been little noted by the American news media – and misreported by those news outlets that reported it at all — the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled last Friday that Germany enjoys immunity from liability for crimes committed by German forces on foreign soil during WWII. The ruling stems from several recent cases in which Italian courts ruled that Germany must pay indemnities to Italian victims of Nazi war crimes or surviving family members. The most sensational of the cases involves the Civitella Massacre, so-named for the village in Tuscany that was at the center of a series of indiscriminate “reprisal actions” undertaken by German forces on June 29, 1944.

Santa Maria Church, after the Civitella Massacre
(source: Imperial War Museum)

For details and background, see my new article on PJMedia here.