It's hard to keep a good man down, but that's nothing compared to the difficulty in keeping a jihadi in jail.  If he's not running out the back door of a mosque after being allowed by his guards to pray alone during a stop on the way to prison, or being released with hundreds of others in return for the return of body parts of a kidnapped and murdered kufr, he's being busted out of jail by his cohorts/coreligionists.  From AP:

MANILA, Philippines – Scores of suspected Islamic militants knocked down a concrete wall and barged into a jail in the volatile southern Philippines on Sunday, freeing 31 inmates in a nighttime attack that sparked a gunbattle in which two people were killed, officials said.

Vice Governor Al Rasheed Sakalahul of Basilan island said 70 heavily armed men cut through padlocks with boltcutters after using a sledgehammer to destroy the wall at the provincial jail in Isabela city to free several detained Muslim guerrillas. Other inmates also dashed to freedom, he said.

The daring assault sparked a brief clash that killed one attacker and a jail guard. The attackers and prisoners fled in several vehicles toward Basilan's jungle-covered mountainous heartland, Sakalahul said.

At least 31 inmates escaped, including suspected militants from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a large Muslim rebel group engaged in peace talks with the government, and the smaller but more violent Abu Sayyaf group, which has been linked to al-Qaida, regional military commander Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino said.

Among those who escaped were two Moro rebels accused of beheading 10 marines during a 2007 clash, national police spokesman Chief Supt. Leonardo Espina said.

"All these are high-risk prisoners," Sakalahul said, adding that troops were closing in on some of the fleeing inmates.

Military checkpoints were set up in Isabela, the provincial capital, and nearby townships, Dolorfino said.

The rundown provincial jail has had a history of jailbreaks. Three Abu Sayyaf militants, also accused of beheading the 10 marines, escaped in December last year after overpowering their guards. At least 16 people, including four Abu Sayyaf members, escaped in 2007.

In the biggest jailbreak, 53 of the jail's more than 130 inmates overpowered their guards using a smuggled pistol and fled in 2004. Nineteen Abu Sayyaf members were among those who escaped, police said.

Sunday's jail attack was the latest violence in the southern Mindanao region, scene of a decades-long Muslim separatist rebellion.

It occurred hours before Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales and military chief of staff Gen. Victor Ibrado flew to Basilan, a predominantly Muslim island 550 miles (880 kilometers) south of Manila, to meet Roman Catholic church leaders who have appealed for martial law to be declared in the province amid recent kidnappings blamed on Islamic militants and the beheading of one hostage.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo imposed martial law in nearby Maguindanao province last week to allow troops to crack down on a powerful political clan blamed for the savage massacre of 57 people, including 30 journalists, on Nov. 23.

The Philippines has between a 5 and 10% Muslim population, which is enough to require 4,000 troops to be deployed in Maguindanao, widespread hostage taking (and the attendant beheadings), and a breakdown in the penal system.  The people of the Philippines are much more deserving of our financial and moral support than the Iraqi or Afghan people.

From The Sunday Times
TALIBAN insurgents who have infiltrated Kabul are nailing “night letters” to the doors of policemen, soldiers and government workers, warning them to leave their jobs or face punishment.
The militants are being welcomed in the Afghan capital’s poorer areas among inhabitants who are disaffected with corruption, and who supply them with food, cash and weapons. And who don't think their treatment of women is anything out of the ordinary, because is the Islamic way, as practised for generations in Afghanistan. 
Safe houses and bomb-making workshops have begun to appear in run-down districts close to the city centre as the militants increase their presence and plot attacks on prominent local targets.
“They know who we are, where we live and what we do,” said Dr Ehsan Anwari, who used to work as an Afghan army medic and now runs a clinic in Company district, where Highway One, the main road from Kandahar to the south, enters the capital. “Whenever we hear shooting we think that the Taliban are taking over the district by force. We are afraid.”
Earlier this year, the Taliban assassinated two army colonels as they walked through Company district to work. The killings forced many government officials to leave the area in fear of their lives.
Local inhabitants said last week that they supported the Taliban because the police had failed to crack down on criminal gangs smuggling drugs, running prostitution rackets and kidnapping businessmen.
Last month in Wardak, a Taliban-controlled province just south of Kabul, the insurgents captured four men accused of kidnapping the son of a wealthy Kabul tea merchant.
The kidnappers had told their victim to pretend he was one of their nephews if they met anyone en route to the gang’s safe house in a remote area. But Taliban footsoldiers at a checkpoint noticed his expensive shoes, jeans and leather jacket.
Days later, four bodies were swinging from a tree in Maidan Shah, the provincial capital. A note pinned to one of them read: “The same fate awaits others who choose to kidnap for a living.”
The Taliban had caught the kidnappers, tortured them and executed them in public. The tea merchant later donated $200,000 to the Taliban as a gift for his son’s release.
The story spread like wildfire through the districts around Highway One.
“It proves the Taliban have no problem with ordinary Afghans. They have a problem with those Afghans who work in high government positions who run crime in this city,” said Karimullah, 40, who owns a shop selling flour, oil and rice. In that they remind me a bit of the IRA in Belfast during the 70s. "We control the crime around here and don't you forget it!"
The mounting collaboration between Kabul’s disaffected residents and the Taliban mirrors the hardline Islamic regime’s rise to power in the mid-1990s, when warlordism, corruption, violence and crime gripped the country during the civil war.
The Taliban used the public’s disgust to garner support, swelling its ranks until its troops seized the capital in 1996.
Apart from wanting the Taliban kept away from Pakistan's nuclear weapons I really don't care about the 'plight' of the Afghans any more.
Also in the Sunday Times this morning.
A deadly game of wits on the roads of blood. 

Task Force Thor has a crucial role: to make the roads safe from IEDs so that convoys can pass. Everything the military needs — fuel, food, ammunition — must come by air or over land. The taskforce covers the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan, where the Taliban are strong.
As the US armour has improved, the insurgents have responded with ever more powerful bombs — ammonium nitrate fertiliser is readily available in the farmland of southern Afghanistan. They have also mounted attacks aimed at separating the troops from their protective vehicles.
Intelligence officers from Task Force Thor said the Taliban had been spotted filming the procedures that soldiers follow when a vehicle is hit. They have subsequently set secondary bombs aimed at soldiers who dismount.
“We even caught one insurgent pacing off the distance between the wheels of an RG-31 [advanced Mrap],” one officer said.
The danger has been compounded in “complex” attacks in which the Taliban set charges aimed at soldiers getting out of their vehicles and ambush them with gunfire.
Colonel Kevin Landers, Task Force Thor’s commander, believes the troops scheduled to arrive in the surge announced by President Barack Obama this month will have a huge impact on its mission.
“There are probably 100 ways to skin this cat, but we decided to push out companies and open lines of communication,” Landers said.

Some more detail than was provided by the East London Advertiser on the councils use of money paid for the benefit of the public in Tower Hamlets.
As well as the minaret shaped minaret there are also to be arches at the entrances to Brick Lane shaped like hijabs.
Not everybody is happy with this use of funds. From the Sunday Express.
Council chiefs in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets are using millions of pounds of public money to push through the bizarre scheme in Brick Lane, a symbolic melting pot of immigrant communities for more than 400 years.
The odd looking minaret has just been put up outside London’s most famous mosque, a building whose appearance until now has remained unchanged during previous spells as a Huguenot church, a Methodist chapel and as a Jewish synagogue.
The structure will be joined soon at either end of the street by two arches that have been designed to look like Muslim hijabs.
All three symbols are costing some £2.5million of public money.
They are part of a town hall drive to transform the street, already famous as London’s “curry capital”, into a “Banglatown” cultural trail, a Bangladeshi version of the successful Chinatown in the capital’s West End.
It is intended as a celebration of how successive generations of immigrants have settled in the area, including the Huguenot weavers of the Eighteenth century, and the German Jews and Irish navvies of Victorian and later times.
However, many fear it will be biased overwhelmingly in favour of the street’s latest custodians, the Bangladeshi Muslims who arrived during the last century. (ie during the last 35 years) 
Brick Lane Jamme Masjid mosque, a religious Grade II listed building that more than any other symbolises the changing character of the area.
Built as a Huguenot church in 1743, it was later a Methodist chapel, a synagogue and converted into a mosque in 1976.
Throughout that time its external appearance never changed.
However, last week that tradition was destroyed when workers started to put up a 90ft illuminated, stainless steel minaret on the building’s doorstep.
. . . it is the symbolism of the minaret and the arches that has upset others.
They believe it is disrespectful to Brick Lane’s history, with Clive Bettington, who runs the Jewish East End Celebration Society, going further.
“It shows absolute contempt for other religions,” he said.
“The trail was meant to be a wonderful thing that reflects the ethnic groups who have come to the area. People who come on my tours to respect what used to be a synagogue will be outraged.
“The arches are clearly meant to be Muslim in character and we are now objecting in the strongest possible terms.”
A senior opposition councillor in the area said they were “utterly appalled” by the decisions, adding: “Things like this damage community cohesion.”
While Mr Bettington and several other groups, including Save Britain’s heritage and the Spitalfields Society, are lodging formal protests against the proposed arches, there is also a question mark over the legitimacy of the minaret.
While Tower Hamlets Council granted planning permission for the minaret in September 2004, that authority was given to the mosque itself.
Years later the mosque realised it did not have enough money and persuaded the council to underwrite the £510,000 project with the huge £8m “planning gain” windfall it received from the nearby Spitalfields Market development.
However, the council was unable to say last Friday whether such money, known as “section 106” cash, was permitted to be spent on religious buildings.
To do the repairs to secure Christ Church Spitalfield took a national fundraising effort.
All the people who could answer that question were celebrating their office Christmas lunches, a spokeswoman said last Friday afternoon.
Meanwhile architect David Gallagher who was responsible for designing the minaret and arches defended the project.
He said: “We were briefed to design something that celebrates the demographic changes of the area.
“The arches were not designed to look like hijabs. Huguenot and Jewish women wore headscarves. The arches are just modern curves and they will have symbols on them reflecting the different immigrant communities. Having the Star of David on them is one option we have considered, but no decision has been made yet.”
There was also always a core indigenous population until recently. People like my family. My grandmother and her siblings were born in Gibraltar Walk and 80 years later my great aunt still lived in a flat in Brick Lane when she died. My grandmother never wore a headscarf but I do have a photograph of her, c1917 in a rather splendid feathered hat. The Huguenot's by the way are credited with giving us East Enders our love of colourful gardens and flamboyant clothes.
A Tower Hamlets Council spokeswoman said the minaret was part of the cultural trail and added: “The minaret is very much a cultural symbol providing a strong cultural clue to the area and endorsing our belief that the local Muslim community is now an integral part, not just of Tower Hamlets, but London and further afield.
“The cultural trail has gone through all of the Council's relevant planning and financial due diligence.”
So they do admit that it is a minaret!!!   Land once Islamic is claimed by Islam for all time.

Our organist played this today at the early communion.
I can't find an organ alone version on youtube that I like but I doubt I will better this first performance of her piano transcription in 1940 by Dame Myra Hess. 
 

Jeffrey Gettleman writes in the NYTimes:

...Southern Sudan, one of the least developed and most war-haunted parts of Africa, is at a critical point, gearing up for a vote on independence that is likely to break an already volatile Sudan in two. It is the culmination of decades of civil war and an American-backed peace treaty to end it, but as the long-savored day approaches, many south Sudanese fear another devastating war is on the horizon.

More than 2,000 people have been killed this year in ethnically driven battles like the recent one in Duk Padiet. “Tribal war” is what the villagers here call it, but southern Sudanese leaders and some United Nations diplomats suspect these are not simply local grievances playing out at gunpoint.

Instead, they point to a recent influx of weapons in the area, saying it suggests that northern Sudanese officials are arming various factions — much as they have done before — in a plot to plunge the south into chaos so that the independence referendum, scheduled for 2011, will be delayed or even called off.

The northern politicians, who control the country, ardently deny these accusations, and there is no concrete proof of meddling. But the stability of Sudan, the largest country in Africa at nearly one million square miles, could be at stake.

More than two million people died during the civil war that ended with the 2005 peace agreement, and if a new north-south conflict were to erupt again it could drag in militants from Darfur, the Nuba mountains, eastern Sudan and other corners of the country.

This time, the center might not hold, many analysts say, given how combustible Sudan’s politics have become. The president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, has been indicted for war crimes; the nation is bracing for a contentious election in April; huge supplies of weapons continue to flow in; and militaries in the north and south are on high alert, especially in unresolved border areas.

Already in the south, villages are getting razed, children abducted and thousands of destitute civilians are streaming into refugee camps in scenes reminiscent of the Darfur conflict, which, after years of raging, is comparatively quiet. “This,” said David Gressly, the top United Nations official in southern Sudan, “is the cockpit” of violence.

He swept his hand across a map showing Jonglei State, where Duk Padiet was attacked by a renegade commander named Chibetek. Several other recent massacres have occurred in the area as well.

Cattle rustling and small-scale skirmishes have gone on for ages, Mr. Gressly said, but this year there was an unusual “ease and availability of ammunition.”

The north has a well-documented history of funneling arms to southern Sudan and pitting southerners against each other, typically along ethnic lines. And there are billions of dollars of oil in the south, which the north clearly does not want to lose.

But the Arab-dominated north is also a convenient scapegoat, and northern officials complain of being portrayed as “the bogeyman.”

Since southern Sudan was granted some autonomy in 2005, its leaders have disappointed their people in many ways, with bungled disarmament schemes and staggering corruption. Recently, $200 million earmarked for grain vanished from the south’s Finance Ministry at a time when drought and conflict-related displacement have driven more than one million southerners to the brink of famine.

The land here is unforgiving, and in places looks like a junkyard of war, with burned-out tanks and shot-down jet fighters sinking into the weeds. During the colonial period, the British carved the area into zones of influence for the few European missionaries willing to brave the rampant malaria, typhoid and unyielding heat.

The people here are strikingly different from their countrymen in the Islamic north. Most are animist or Christian, extremely tall — it’s not uncommon to meet seven-foot men — and wedded to a life revolving so closely around cows that people name children after them.

Even before Sudan was granted independence in 1956, southerners were chafing for their own country. War broke out several times, and in the late 1980s, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army emerged as the strongest, multi-ethnic guerrilla force.

But just as the S.P.L.A. was about to capture major cities, the rebels — instigated by northern politicians — violently split. Some of the worst atrocities during the civil war were south-on-south violence, like the so-called Bor Massacre in 1991, when Nuer warriors slaughtered 2,000 Dinka. It was essentially a civil war within a civil war.

Many people here say it is beginning to feel like that now...

Notice Gettleman fails to mention Islam, neither the Northern effort to impose Islamic law on an unwilling populace nor the Arab/Muslim supremecism that helps create the mindset that the southerners are expendable.

From Israel International News
A Muslim on Saturday night attacked a Habad Rabbi who was conducting a public Chanukah lighting ceremony in Vienna. The Muslim attacked Rabbi Dov Gruzman, who is the principal of the Habad school in the city, as he was lighting a Menorah in a central Vienna square, pummeling him with punches and blows.
The Muslim then bit Rabbi Gruzman, detaching part of his finger. The Muslim was arrested and is being held for questioning. The Rabbi was rushed to the hospital, where doctors rushed to repair his finger, and (this is the best bit!) gave him tests to see if the Muslim had infected him with diseases.

Watch, and listen, here.

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Witnesses say Islamist militants have executed two men accused by the fighters of murder and adultery.

Witnesses in the town of Afgoye southwest of the capital say the Hizbul Islam militants on Sunday stoned to death the man accused of adultery and shot the man accused of murder. They say the militants summoned the town's residents to watch the executions.

Islamic courts run by radical clerics have ordered executions, floggings and amputations in recent months. In some areas militants have also banned movies, musical telephone ringtones, dancing at weddings and playing or watching soccer.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then turned on each other.

Doug Hagmann writes (thanks to D. L. Adams):

It happened again on Wednesday, December 9, 2009, less than a month after the incident aboard AirTran Flight 297.

United Airlines Flight 227, scheduled to depart Denver International Airport at 1:50 pm Wednesday for Los Angeles was disrupted when several passengers who were described as Middle Eastern in appearance, confirmed by this investigator to be a group of Muslims traveling together,  were removed from that aircraft due to suspicious behavior that originated in the terminal and continued to the airplane. Their behavior was consistent in some respects to the behavior of the Muslim passengers aboard AirTran Flight 297 on November 17, 2009 that caused a flurry of controversy over its legitimacy, and the now infamous case of the “Flying Imams” of 2006.

According to information obtained by this investigator, seven men of Middle Eastern appearance, boarded flight 227. Two took their seats in coach, while five took their seats in the first class section of the plane.  At a critical pre-flight point, the individuals appeared to act in concert with one another, changing seats and moving stowed luggage to very specific areas of the aircraft, often having to move the stowed bags of other passengers to do so.  They disobeyed or otherwise ignored the admonitions of the flight attendants to remain seated.

Their behavior was so overt and so apparently choreographed, according to our sources, that the flight crew demanded the passengers be removed from the aircraft. One report found on 9News in Denver quoted John Sloan, a passenger aboard that flight:
“I have never seen flight attendants so scared in my life. Everything turned out OK, but it was not a very good feeling..”

Following the removal of the passengers, officials brought a bomb-sniffing dogs aboard the aircraft, focusing of the first class section of the plane. Subsequent to the search that found nothing, the offending passengers were removed from the flight and rebooked on another aircraft to their destination. According to federal officials, no criminal investigation is being launched into this incident, which was described as a “customer service” matter.
Early this morning, this investigator spoke to a law enforcement source in Denver who is intimately familiar with the incident. Many details have not been publicly reported about this incident, although it is clear that there is an agenda at play. Based on information obtained from this source and others relating to the previous flights disrupted by the deliberate behavior of Muslim passengers, it is clear that the airline industry, as well as the sensibilities of normal Americans, is under attack through Islamic ideological jihad. Additional information will be provided once our investigation is complete.

I love most Christmas carols, and it is hard to single out a favourite. But The Coventry Carol must be in the top five. The Coventry Carol must not be confused with Coventry Carol - we don't talk about her.

A bit of background:

The Coventry Carol is a Christmas carol dating from the 16th Century. The carol was performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod orders all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed. The lyrics of this haunting carol represent a mother's lament for her doomed child. It is the only carol that has survived from this play.

It is notable as a well-known example of a Picardy third. The author is unknown. The oldest known text was written down by Robert Croo in 1534, and the oldest known printing of the melody dates from 1591.^[1] The carol is traditionally sung a cappella. There is an alternative setting of the carol by Kenneth Leighton.

The only manuscript copy to have survived into recent times was burnt in 1875.^[2] Our knowledge of the lyrics is therefore based on two very poor quality transcriptions from the early nineteenth century, and there is considerable doubt about many of the words. Some of the transcribed words are difficult to make sense of: for example, in the last verse "And ever morne and may For thi parting Neither say nor singe" is not clear. Various modern editors have made different attempts to make sense of the words, so that you may find such variations as "ever mourn and say", "every morn and day", "ever mourn and sigh". The following is one attempted reconstruction. 

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Lullay, thou little tiny Child,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we do sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might, in his own sight,

All children young to slay.

That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!

And ever mourn and sigh,

For thy parting neither say nor sing,

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

Jerry Gordon joins Hugh Fitzgerald, Rebecca Bynum Richard Rubenstein and Norman Berdichevsky in having one of his New English Review pieces translated into Polish.

See here.

LIsten here.