The following was posted at Instapundit on Thursday.

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UGH: Timbuktu falls to radical Islamists.

HUGE EXPLOSIONS IN DAMASCUS: Syrian state television reports two huge explosions in Damascus that killed 55 people and injured 372. The question is, were these attacks mounted by jihadists, which is entirely possible, or were they staged by the Syrian government itself like some in the past?

TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN? Germany considers banning Salafist groups (the ideological comrades of the bin Ladenists) after violent street clashes.

I’m not convinced it’s a good idea to ban political movements. The ideas can’t be banned, after all. Thought cannot be policed. But Germany is already a country that bans totalitarian political parties, so why not add Salafists to the list? Anyone who thinks such a move would be “Islamophobic” should be aware that Tunisia, an Arab country that’s 99 percent Muslim, also bans the Salafist party. When these people reach critical mass they're extraordinarily dangerous.

MASSIVE PROTESTS at Vladimir Putin’s inauguration.

IN THE MAIL: Find, Fix, Finish: Inside the Counterterrorism Campaigns that Killed bin Laden and Devastated Al Qaeda

AN UNLIKELY STREETFIGHTER: Famous hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, who died yesterday, spent his youth fighting fascists in Britain and for Israel’s independence.

In 1947, the fascists again began menacing London, this time under the tutelage of Jeffrey Hamm, head of an organization of thugs calling themselves the “Association of British Ex-Servicemen.” For Sassoon, this was not a fate to be accepted lying down.

As a response to Hamm’s provocations, a gathering of young Jews known as the 43 Group—named for the number of people in the room at their founding—announced that the fight back had begun. Among them was the slender, if wiry, Sassoon. As Hamm’s followers gathered on street corners bellowing that “not enough Jews were burned at Belsen,” Sassoon and his comrades, armed with knives, coshes, and knuckledusters, set about breaking up fascist meetings. In another interview, Sassoon remembered turning up for work one morning with a black eye. “I just tripped on a hairpin,” he explained to the worried customer who had just settled into a barber’s chair for a haircut.

STOP BEING STUPID: There is no “kindler, gentler” Taliban.

THE MONUMENTAL HAMAS MAP OF DENIAL.