Marriott Edgar (1880-1951), born George Marriot Edgar in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, was a poet, scriptwriter and comedian best known for writing many of the monologues performed by Stanley Holloway, particularly the 'Albert' series. In total he wrote 16 Stanley Holloway monologues, whilst Holloway himself wrote only 5.

His parents were Jennifer nee Taylor, a native of Dundee, and Richard Horatio Edgar, only son of Alice Marriott, (Mrs. Robert Edgar), proprietor of the Marriott family theatre troupe; Richard had two sisters, Grace, and Adeline Marriott. All took their stepfather's surname, Edgar.

Richard and Jenny married in March 1875, with Richard being unaware that he had fathered an illegitimate namesake son, Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace, with his "honorary sister", widowed actress Mrs Mary Jane "Polly" Richards, after a brief sexual encounter when they were both extremely drunk at a back-stage party. Polly had invented an obligation in London to hide her pregnancy and give birth in secret. This son became the famous journalist, novelist, playwright and screenplay writer Edgar Wallace.

George Marriott Edgar was five years younger than his elder paternal half-brother. He was a talented performer, poet and writer in his own right, and excelled once he had joined up with Holloway. They went to Hollywood at the start of the 1930s, Edgar having dropped his first name for his "professional" appellation of Marriott Edgar. During the few months of 1931-1932, the two half-brothers, Marriott Edgar and Edgar Wallace encountered each other in Los Angeles. Wallace had learned of his paternal semi-siblings' existence from his niece, Miss A Grace Donovan, who was the only child of his only maternal semi-sibling, Polly Richards' daughter, Mrs Josephine Catherine Richards Donovan (1868-1894). However, there is only evidence of him definitely meeting Marriott Edgar.

When Marriott Edgar wrote his most famous The Lion & Albert monologue, he named the lion Wallace in what is now generally recognised to be a fraternal in-joke nod to his brother. Marriott outlived Edgar Wallace by 19 years.

From the National Examiner
Maurice Clemmons, the alleged shooter in the Sunday murder of four Lakewood, Washington police officers, was killed early this morning by a Seattle police officer.
The blogsite Fire Andrea Mitchell reported that a Nation of Islam offshoot called National Black Foot Soldiers held a protest today outside the Parkland, Washington coffee shop where the murders occurred. The protesters allegedly gathered to celebrate Clemmons as a "Crowned BOW (Black on White) Martyr," calling his attack a "preemptive strike on terrorists..."
The substance of this story was originally announced by a blog called the Last Crusade, which has also claimed that Clemmons converted to Islam while imprisoned in Arkansas. That claim is not substantiated.
Whatever the Black Foot Soldiers may be planning, there actually was no "rally." Spokesmen for both the Lakewood and Tacoma, Washington police departments said they had not heard of anything like that going on. The Pierce County Sheriff's office, which is handling the coffee shop shooting investigation, stated unequivocally that there was no such protest.
The truth is actually worse. The Black Foot Soldiers were not protesting, except perhaps online, but they were referring to Clemmons' attack as a protest:

Seattle Black Foot Soldiers say the four people slain in a daring demonstration at the Steele Street Forza Coffee House in Parkland were racist terrorists who caused black citizens to live in fear. (Emphasis added.)

What these groups say is that any killing of whites, including in this case Clemmons' cold-blooded murder of officers Renninger, Owens, Griswald, and Richards, is "a legitimate protest". Black Male Felon celebrates the killings as "Brother Maurice Clemmons' daring stand against white police terrorism." The theme of National Black Foot Soldiers is captured in the slogan: "When whites pay reparations there will be no more black on white crime."
The vitriolic hatred on these sites is enough to turn a person's stomach.  . . They blatantly advocate murder and defend other recent cases of seemingly senseless black on white killings, like the four Oakland police officers killed by Lovelle Mixon, and many, many others.
It is not known at present whether or not Clemmons was associated with any of these groups, but one post ascribes a quote to Clemmons, in which he says: "Watch the news, I'm gonna kill a bunch of cops."
Whatever the case, it is likely that Clemmons knew he would find police victims at that coffee shop. The Forza Coffee Company was founded by a retired police officer. And while the Steele Street franchise where the shootings occurred had no tie to him, it was apparently a place frequented by local police.
The Pierce County Sheriff's office will, no doubt, publish the results of their investigation in due course but if there is any substance in this it is most disturbing.

George McCallum of Georgia has won November's crossword puzzle. He will receive a copy of Andrew Bostom's Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. Congratulations George!

Honorable mention goes to Travis Williams of Arkansas.

Thanks to everyone who participated and keep playing!

Chaplain Dr. Keith A. Robinson is another eyewitness to the incident we reported last night about Air Tran flight 292 from Atlanta to Houston on November 17th.

His account is in pdf form here.

This is a relief. From The Times
Five British yachtsman detained by Iran after straying into its territorial waters were being towed back to freedom today after being released by the Revolutionary Guards.
Iranian state radio announced the men's release early this morning, six days after they were picked up near the Iranian island of Sirri, where they had then been held.
A Foreign Office spokesman said that the five and the yacht they had been crewing, the Kingdom of Bahrain, were being towed by Iranian vessels back into international waters in the Gulf, where they would be met by boats from the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club.
"We understand that they are most likely to be towed back to the yacht club," he said.
Next time, in case the engine fails again, take oars. I suppose Iranian Revolutionary Guards are a better prospect than Somali Pirates.

From The Waltham Forest Guardian. This trial is coming to an end.
THREE brothers accused of killing a teenager in a so-called honour killing are lying to escape jail, a court heard.
Tulay Goren, 15, disappeared from her home in Glastonbury Avenue, Woodford Green, in January 1999.
Police believe the Woodbridge High School pupil was killed because her family disapproved of her relationship with 30-year-old Halil Unal, who follows a different branch of Islam.
The teenager’s father Mehmet Goren, 49, of Navestock Crescent, Woodford Green, and her uncles Ali Goren, of Brettenham Road, Walthamstow and Cuma Goren, of Evesham Avenue, Walthamstow, all deny murder.
At the Old Bailey today, Jonathan Laidlaw, summing up the proscution case, said all three men were lying to try to escape conviction.
He reminded the jury that Tulay's mother had told the court that Ali was the most senior member of the family and fed and clothed Memet's family both in Turkey and the UK, yet Ali denied being involved in Mehmet's family's affairs.
Mr Laidlaw said: “Tulay's involvement with a Sunni Muslim had an impact which extended beyond Mehmet and his family and that is why, we say, there was the involvement of the older brother.”
He went on: “The senior member of the family is responsible for solving the family's honour.”
Mr Laidlaw said of Mehmet's other brother, Cuma: “He either physically assisted and or was consulted about and gave approval to the murder of that child.”

From The Times
Two sisters were reunited with their grandmother yesterday four months after allegedly being kidnapped from their home in Blackpool and taken to North Africa.
Carene and Shelby Crofts, aged 12 and 11, had been the subject of international negotiations since being discovered in the care of strangers in Fez, Morocco. British consular officials brokered a deal for their return home but it collapsed.
Their ordeal apparently ended when Carene fled the house during an argument and ran into the arms of English-speaking neighbours. The police were called and the children were taken into care, allowing the British Consul to rule that they were abandoned and eligible for repatriation.
The sisters were put on a plane in Morocco yesterday and flew into Heathrow at teatime to be greeted by their grandmother. Rita Astbury, 54, who lives in Blackpool, said: “It is the end of what seemed like a never-ending nightmare. . . It has been very frustrating that the law, the Government and the police all seemed unable to act. It took a 12-year-old girl to cut through the red tape.Thank God we will be able to enjoy a happy Christmas with them back where they belong. I am so proud of Carene and Shelby for the way they have stood up to this. They have been through a terrible time. They were tearful but glad to be coming home.”
The girls had been missing since August when their mother, Trudy Crofts, 32, who lost custody of her daughters seven years ago, allegedly seized them during a routine access visit and took them out of the country. It is thought that she took them first to Spain and then to Morocco, where they were left with her boyfriend’s family in Fez.
Despite efforts to repatriate them they remained there until an argument over a television programme led to Carene being chased around the house and into the street by a man brandishing a slipper.
The girls were given residence with Mrs Astbury in 2002 because her daughter had been “struggling to cope”. Since then Ms Crofts has lost three cases regarding residence.
At the time Mrs Astbury said: “She wants to start a new life as a Muslim. She had the kids in long clothes with wraps around them and said she had taken them to the mosque.”
Ms Crofts, whose daughters have different fathers, was arrested by the Spanish authorities and held in Madrid before being extradicted.
The first comment has this mother taped as a proper dozy bint and no mistake.

by Ibn Warraq (December 2009)

Paul Sperry, author of the excellent Infiltration and co author with Dave Gaubatz of the new Muslim Mafia, writes in the New York Post:

A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations, among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the "9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees.

Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in 2003.

The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and former Army linguist Ahmed Mehalba, an Egyptian native, were later convicted of stealing or mishandling classified documents.

Six years later comes a new problem with Muslim personnel who have virtually unfettered access to detainees and intelligence at Gitmo. Professional military security and intelligence officials at Gitmo did the preliminary probe, then prepared a classified summary and are now briefing top officials and members of Congress in Washington. An active FBI criminal probe is also under way.

The possible new spy ring involves several Arabic linguists, some also Egyptian and Syrian immigrants. They're suspected of, among other things:

* Omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of interrogations.

* Slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Koran.

* Coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators.

* Meeting with suspects on the terror watchlist while back in the United States.

Officials say some of the suspected "dirty" linguists -- who met privately in a locked mosque at Gitmo -- have had access to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other high-value al Qaeda detainees.

"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian-contractor and military-linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a copy of a classified Gitmo briefing, prepared in May for the FBI, CIA and Congress' intelligence committees.

The report explains that dirty Arabic linguists have gathered classified data involving detainees, interrogations and security operations in an effort to "disrupt" Gitmo operations and US "intelligence-collection capabilities."

It goes on to specifically finger the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization. The US operations and front groups of the Egypt-based brotherhood are the subject of my recently released book, "Muslim Mafia," which first revealed the contents of the secret Gitmo report.

"These actions are deliberate, carefully planned, global, and to the benefit of the detainees and multiple terrorist organizations, to include al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood," the briefing states.

How did this happen at the highest security facility in the world? In the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, US officials went from waterboarding terrorists to handing them prayer rugs and Korans, while calling them to prayer five times a day. Pentagon political correctness dictated turning a blind eye to any questions of loyalty among Muslim linguists and chaplains.

Compromised interrogations could affect releases and trials -- and the problems go much further.

At least one in seven former Gitmo detainees has returned to terrorism or militant activity. Some recidivists had met with the suspect Muslim translators. Others were privately counseled by Muslim chaplains and lay leaders also under investigation for security breaches.

If they fed intelligence to these repatriated detainees, then al Qaeda and the Taliban may know what we know about them and adjust accordingly.

Prisoners released from Gitmo are allowed to keep their Korans -- and it's camp policy not to search the holy books. Non-Muslim personnel can't even touch them. There's no telling what military secrets have been compromised.

Also in question is just how far the enemy has penetrated our critical foreign-language program -- not just at Gitmo, but across the entire national security and intelligence complex. Many Arabic linguists are contractors who rotate in and out of the federal security agencies leading the War on Terror.

To prevent future betrayal, the government must reevaluate its security-clearance and hiring procedures for contract and military linguists. Post-hiring, it must institute periodic security interviews, polygraph exams and database-access audits for each translator.

More immediately, it must review key translations on the shelf for accuracy, using trustworthy translators -- and subject new translations to spot-checking in a stringent quality-assurance program.

The translation of intelligence against our enemy -- evidence that will now be tested in civilian court -- can no longer be blindly entrusted to individuals with possibly divided loyalties.

We also know that Christian and Jewish Arabic speakers were overlooked in the rush to hire Muslims as translators.

Here is an excerpt from what Anas Takriti, a supposed "moderate" as the head of sometning called the Cordoba Foundation  --"a London-based think-tank concerned with building bridges and improving understanding between the West and the Muslim world, through research, training and conflict resolution" --writes at the website of  Al Jazeera:

"The mind is boggled by the fact that Switzerland, a country renowned for its tolerant nature, could come to see less than a handful of minarets as a threat to its identity and culture.

The main campaign poster used by far right groups to rally against the construction of minarets in Switzerland depicted a Muslim woman in niqab standing before a multitude of minarets graphically rendered to look like missiles.

Switzerland's Commission Against Racism said that the campaign poster defamed the country's Muslim minority.

Neither the niqab nor the minaret is characteristic of the Muslim community in Switzerland but both have been regularly used to stoke the flames of hatred and fear against Muslims throughout Europe in recent times.

And it was that fear which pushed over half of Swiss voters to choose, by a majority of 57 per cent, to support the minaret ban called for by the Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC), a right wing populist party.

Switzerland's identity crisis

The vote revealed that Switzerland, like a number of other Western nations, faces a deep identity crisis which has nothing to do with Islam, sharia, immigration or any other red-rags that were waived by the far-right to increase European fears of Muslims. 

The question the Swiss should really be asking themselves is whether the values of human rights, civil liberties and democracy - upheld so preciously by European nations - are practised as reverently as they are preached."

This becomes even more of a crisis when one recalls that among the crucial outcomes of the struggle between church and state throughout Europe was the emergence of these values as an 'alternative' to church dictate and the preaching of clerics.

Hence, the first serious problem with the referendum process is how a democratic society can begin to contemplate holding a popular vote on a matter that is regarded integral to the core themes of freedom and rights.

While it is only fair to assert that the Swiss government and most newspaper editors had urged voters to defeat the ban, it remains the case that the vote should not have been held in the first place. The very concept of a referendum in which the vast majority are asked to vote on a topic specific to the culture or religion of a minority group is in itself extremely problematic."

Imagine the furor that would certainly ensue should a country with an overwhelmingly Muslim population be asked to vote on whether its small Christian community should be allowed to build their churches according to a particular design or method, or whether they would rather do without the church bells sounding from time to time."

Can you stand it? It isn't hypocrisy. It's beyond hypocrisy. It's far beyond, in another world, the world of Muslims who cannot stand outside Islam, and cannot begin to imagine the world from the viewpoint of others, nor begin to imagine what the practices and views of Muslim states and societies look like to non-Muslims on the receiving end. His sinister lack of awareness, lack even of an awareness of what Infidels now know about Islam, or are rapidly learning, amazes. It's fantastic.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and no such thing as an interest free loan. "Interest free credit" simply means that you can’t negotiate a discount as you could if you paid cash. But “interest free” sounds good, and it makes people feel good.

It makes Muslims feel better than good - they feel holy. How much better it is to take out a Sharia compliant mortgage, such as the one Esmerelda drew my attention to, than to go the way of the infidel. And infidels can get them. From Yahoo! Finance:

[T]hings work in a slightly different way to a mainstream mortgage. Basically, you buy the property alongside the bank (they will stump up 70%-80%). Then, over the term of your mortgage , you make monthly payments towards the bank, buying its share of the property over time.

And the total of those monthly payments? Might it be more than the 70% - 80% of the market value of the property at inception? And the difference between the two figures - what should you call it? And does the bank bear the risk of a fall in the property’s market value, or the rewards of a rise? Could this be, in substance but not in form, a secured loan like any other mortgage?

If you doubt it, look no further than the next paragraph, where the writer sells this "Sharia compliant" mortgage to infidels (my emphasis):

 And the products do look pretty attractive - for a deal of up to 80%, you will be facing an effective interest rate of 4.99%.

The lowest rate you can get elsewhere at that loan-to-value is a tracker from Royal Bank of Scotland at Bank Base Rate plus 2.39% for two years, which is obviously much more attractive, but far more of a risk should Base Rate start to move upwards. It will also set you back £1499 just to get hold of it, compared to £299 for the Sharia'a deal.

In truth, the best thing to compare the mortgage to is a long-term fixed rate . And the best five-year fixed rate at 80% loan-to-value, from Nottingham Building Society, comes at 5.59% and will cost the best part of a £1000 in mortgage fees.

Effective interest rate? Of course there is an effective interest rate. The product is no more "interest-free" than a rock band's amplifier that “goes up to eleven” is “one louder”. As I wrote last year, this is the essence of Islamic banking. The prohibition on interest (riba) is circumvented by calling it something else, for example “rent”, "premium on repurchase" or “extra capital”. Everyone knows that money today is worth more than money tomorrow. Omar Khayyam preferred to “take the cash and let the credit go”. Muslims know this too, and if you pay them tomorrow they will make you pay – one way or another – more than you pay today.

This may be a good product; its effective interest rate may be better than that of the Nottingham Building Society (although without legal title to the property), but the price - the domestication of Islam - is way too high.

Mecca, 25 Nov. (AKI) - The grandmother of US president Barack Obama has arrived in Saudi Arabia for the 'Hajj' or Islamic pilgrimage to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, a Saudi daily said on Wednesday. Sarah Obama, 87, is being accompanied by a nephew and Obama's cousin, Omran.

On Wednesday Sarah Obama was in the valley of Mina with an African delegation, according to the Saudi daily Okaz.

Obama, the mother of the American president's father, lives in a village in Kenya and is one of the many guests of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud.

So now the question is, did elderly Sarah Obama lie to reporters about being a Christian during the Presidential campaign, or did AP lie to us? By the way, Sarah Obama is one of Barack's grandfather's plural wives - she is not biologically related. One assumes his real grandmother is dead.

h/t: Bluegrass Pundit

We spent October half term week on the borders of Withshire and Somerset, which is Wadworths Country. 6X, which is brewed in Devizes has been a favourite of mine for over 30 years.
The next time we visit the area I must make sure that I take a tour round the Wadworths Brewery for a second very good reason. Wadworths are the only Brewery left in England to retain a dedicated signwriting department. Other breweries’s pubs will still appreciate the value of a good sign but they will commission a freelance artist or an independent firm of signwriters to produce their requirements.
One thing I have noticed recently is that the Kent brewer Shepherd Neame (also excellent beer, Spitfire among them) has been signing their pubs with attractive signs, individual to each pub and appropriate to its name, but in a corporate design of black, white and red. When I noticed the first few I quite liked them; now I am starting to wonder whether they are a little too uniform.
The Telegraph had this article earlier in the year.

From Der Spiegel

Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic

By Gabor Steingart

AFP

President Barack Obama's Tuesday speech left a bad taste in many mouths.

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers and realists feeling distraught.

One can hardly blame the West Point leadership. The academy commanders did their best to ensure that Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama's speech would be well-received.

Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the gathered cadets were asked to respond "enthusiastically" to the speech. But it didn't help: The soldiers' reception was cool.

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama's speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan -- and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

Just in Time for the Campaign

For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for Obama's re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

Obama's Magic No Longer Works

But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed, one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama's magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.

It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives -- their job, their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the war on terror, where they sometimes die.

Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners -- particularly those with a talent for oration -- are fond of taking refuge. It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent called "Hope."

In his speech on America's new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.

The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's already got himself.

Listen here

Occasionally - well, quite often in fact - I am asked: "Must you?". This is a num question, with an implied reproach. And the answer is no: I do not have to, but I want to.

So, on seeing, in Esmerelda's latest wonderful photo essay on the pub signs, a reference to Devizes, I was moved to frame an imperfect symmetry:

There was a young man from Devizes
Whose balls were of differing sizes
One was so small
It was no ball at all,
But the other was huge and won prizes

For a real imbalance of power, see the monorchic Hitler, who couldn't hold a candle to the monarchic, unbridled Charles II.

More sauce, for gander and goose, in Uttoxeter and all points north.