Saturday, November 28, 2015

Some Stores Temporarily Shut Down by Black Friday Protesters in Chicago (VIDEO)

From Lee Stranahan, at Big Government.

And more video from yesterday's protests:



Many Families Skipped Black Friday Shopping Altogether (VIDEO)

We're seeing something of a culture shift away from this monstrosity of a shopping day.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



Winter Is Coming

This one's also on my Christmas list.

I love books!

At Amazon, Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.

Garry Kasparov photo WinterIsComing.jpg-1-sm_zpsa1jrnq2u.jpg

Slovakia Gun Shop Was Source of Weapons in #ParisAttacks

Following-up from yesterday, "Planning for #ParisAttacks Hatched in Plain Sight."

And here's the latest on that, at WSJ, "Slovakian Shop Is Eyed as Source of Guns in Prior Terror Attacks":
PARTIZANSKE, Slovakia—For more than two decades, a store in the basement of a Soviet-style building here has sold deactivated weapons and replica Nazi uniforms to private collectors or for use as movie props.

This year, it has also been a source for weapons that European security officials say were later reactivated and used by jihadists in at least two terror attacks on the continent, a chilling exploitation of Europe’s fragmented gun laws.

European security officials said decommissioned guns purchased legally from the AFG store, owned by AFG Security Corp., have been transferred to safe houses in Western Europe, primarily Belgium, a known weapons-trading hub. Jihadists used weapons sold by AFG and reactivated in Belgium in a three-day spate of terror attacks in Paris in January, the officials said, as well as in an attack on a French high-speed train in August, foiled when the culprit was tackled by passengers after his gun misfired.

“The AK-47 type automatic gun used in the thwarted Thalys [train] attack came from the same provider as the guns used in January,” a French police officer close to the matter said. “The gunmen didn’t get the guns themselves directly in Slovakia, but from intermediaries in Belgium.”

In a recent interview from behind the counter at AFG, Frantisek Gajdos, the 24-year-old son of the store’s owner, said the business hadn’t broken any laws. “We sell these guns to many people, and some of them are foreigners,” he said. “But that’s legal.”

Slovakia’s laws governing decommissioned weapons have long been less restrictive than elsewhere in Europe. Until recently, these weapons were sold legally to anyone over 18 years old, no license required. Although it is illegal to restore them in Slovakia, doing so isn’t as difficult as it is with weapons bought in other European countries, according to gun experts and Slovak officials.

Denmark decommissions weapons by sawing them in half; Italy fills the barrels with lead. Guns sold in Slovakia had their barrels perforated with a pin, a step gun experts said could be defeated by changing the barrel.

In July, six months after the first Paris attacks, Slovakia’s government tightened the laws on selling and reactivating decommissioned weapons, which experts say will make it more difficult, but not impossible, to restore such arms. Last week, the European Commission said it would tighten legislation to ensure deactivated guns couldn’t be easily restored...
Well, more gun laws won't stop terrorism. There's a freakin' weapons pipeline from Eastern Europe into the EU nations. Expect more jihad terrorism.

But keep reading.

Don't Take Family Time for Granted — Ever!

From Michelle Malkin, "Have a Happy, Politics-Free Thanksgiving":
Many people naturally assume that since I work in political journalism, I must breathe, drink and eat politics 24/7/365 — including on the Thanksgiving holiday.

The thought of it gives me indigestion.

Self-absorbed creatures who have no life outside the Beltway world are the most tiresome ogres. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest advised Americans “sitting around the Thanksgiving table” to talk about gun control. The left-wing National Memo published “5 Things To Tell Your Republican relatives at Thanksgiving.” And The New York Times served up its own version of “How to Talk to Your Relatives About Politics at Thanksgiving,” stuffed with poll data and hyperlinks to other liberal sources of information.

Nobody needs tryptophan when you’ve got Pundy McPundit (amateur, professional or otherwise) at the table to bore your company to death with his or her insights on “climate-proofing” your holiday feast; bombard you with details about Bernie Sanders’ latest Web ad; regurgitate John Kasich’s latest attacks on critics of his massive Medicaid expansion; or champion Jeb Bush’s latest re-re-re-reboot (two exclamation points, new talking points, a fix-it toolbox, blah, blah blah).

Zzzzzzzz.

I feel sorry for rabid partisans on either side of the aisle who refuse to talk to family members, co-workers or friends who support a candidate they don’t like. Life’s too short — and 99 percent of all politicians are crapweasels, anyway.

I’ve encountered unhinged hotheads who yelled at me in front of my kids at IHOP over my appearances over the years on Fox News. Way to ruin a Funny Face Pancake moment, one-dimensional oafs.

And I’ve known people who shunned my left-leaning in-laws because they refused to denounce their conservative daughter-in-law. Gotta love the Tolerance Brigade.

Newsflash: Even amid a heated campaign season, global jihadist terror and economic insecurity, there is more to life than #WINNING political arguments.

It shouldn’t be a struggle to avoid yelling about Bush, Clinton or Trump as you pass the sweet-potato casserole. Don’t get mad. Get perspective. Here, let me help:

If your children are alive, free and healthy, count your blessings and say a prayer for all those parents spending the holiday week in hospitals, hospices, clinics, jails or funeral homes.

If you can’t think of something nice to say to the person sitting next of you, trade memories of the dearest, departed loved ones you share a connection with who are no longer sitting at the table at all.

Pick up an instrument and play music together or sing some old hymns of Thanksgiving (“We Gather Together” was always my favorite).

Take a walk, breathe fresh air, go out on the deck and make fire pit s’mores (or use the gas grill).
Show the young ones at your gathering how to make rubberband stars, advanced paper airplanes, origami hearts or crochet snowflakes.

Get silly. Play “Charades” or “Spoons” or “Balderdash.” Laugh at yourself and laugh with your relatives.

Don’t take family time for granted. Ever...
Well, I'm not forgetting.

I took my 14-year-old son to see "The Hunger Games" yesterday. We had fun, although those Katniss movies aren't the same without the actual "Hunger Games" in them, heh.

In any case, still more at Michelle's.

#UCLAvsUSC to Determine Line-Up for #Pac12 Championship Game — And More! (VIDEO)

Following-up from Thanksgiving, "UCLA Bruins Riding the Wave of College Football's Crosstown Rivalry in Los Angeles (VIDEO)."

See the O.C. Register, "USC-UCLA about more than bragging rights this year":

LOS ANGELES – Forget bulletin board material.

The lead-up to Saturday afternoon’s UCLA-USC rivalry game offered little as far as shots or verbal sparring between the players and coaches.

“I’m not too big into rivalries and hate for another school,” USC’s two-way star Adoree’ Jackson said. “I’ve got much love and respect for those guys over there.”

Among the Bruins, they hardly expressed love, but they avoided needling their crosstown counterparts. No one publicly said “Southern Cal,” a name unpopular among USC fans and officials, so much so that the school’s media guide explicitly requests it not be used.

During his first few years as UCLA coach, Jim Mora rarely turned down the opportunity to utter the term.

But the Bruins have moved on.

“We’re finger tips away from what we’ve worked so hard for,” UCLA sophomore linebacker Kenny Young said.

Both No.22 UCLA and USC go into this game knowing a win gives them the Pac-12 South title and a rematch with Stanford.

The winner advances to the Dec.5 conference title game in Santa Clara against the Pac-12 North champion Cardinal, which has been a thorn in the side of both programs lately. Stanford has won eight straight against the Bruins (8-3, 5-3 in the Pac-12) and five of the past seven against the Trojans (7-4, 5-3).

“It’s really not about the rivalry,” USC senior defensive tackle Antwaun Woods said. “It’s about fixing our errors. We’re not really worried about them or the rivalry.”

Clearly, much more than city bragging rights are at stake.

A win will be a narrative-shaping moment for either side, adding to USC interim coach Clay Helton’s case to take the reins on a full-time basis or putting Mora in position to win his first Pac-12 championship in his four seasons in Westwood. The former NFL coach has had little trouble putting away the Trojans, winning all three previous meetings by double-digits, but he has yet to beat either of the North Division heavyweights, Stanford and Oregon...
More.

Plus, at the Los Angeles Times, "UCLA and USC paths were filled with rocks but still could be strewn with roses."

Rocky Mountains Planned Parenthood CEO Says No Reason to Believe Colorado Springs Would Be Targeted (VIDEO)

Definitely a sad day in Colorado, and for the nation.

At the New York Times, "During Planned Parenthood Shooting, Fear and Chaos at Shopping Center."

Leftists were off the bat faster than a Mike Trout long ball, politicizing the shooting to advance the far-left extremist agenda.

See Leon Wolf, at Red State, "Planned Parenthood Shooter Finally Convinces Leftists that Beliefs Matter." And at Gateway Pundit, via Memeorandum, "COURT RECORDS: Colorado Planned Parenthood Shooter NOT Republican, Identifies as Woman."

Sounds like a leftist, heh.

More at CNN, "Rocky Mountains CEO Vicki Cowens says she has no reason to believe that their Colorado Springs facility would be targeted by a gunman":



Friday, November 27, 2015

Planning for #ParisAttacks Hatched in Plain Sight

This story is still front-page news, almost two-weeks later.

At WSJ, "Paris Attacks Plot Was Hatched in Plain Sight":
BOBIGNY, France—Three days before the attacks that ripped through Paris, Djazira Boulanger handed the keys to her row house, across the street from a kindergarten, to a guest who had booked it over the website Homelidays.com. His name was Brahim Abdeslam.

She didn’t know that Mr. Abdeslam was a central figure in plotting the deadly assault. As Ms. Boulanger tended to her two young children at home, authorities say Mr. Abdeslam and a band of cohorts were down the street preparing weapons for an assault on the Stade de France and Paris’s nightlife district.

“Did I suspect something was wrong? Not at all,” Ms. Boulanger said.

A day after he checked in, Mr. Abdeslam’s younger brother, Salah, pulled up to the roadside hotel Appart’City on the southern outskirts of Paris, according to staff, to claim reservations he made on Booking.com—also under his own name. The rooms were for another set of gunmen in the attacks: those assigned to mow down spectators inside the Bataclan concert hall.

Prosecutors suspect the brothers were preparing the logistics for Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged architect of the massacres, to arrive in Paris and swiftly mount one of the deadliest terror attacks in French history. Brahim would later blow himself up during the attacks, while Salah is now the target of an international manhunt.

Mr. Abaaoud was the kind of adversary France had dreaded since the Syrian conflict began drawing European nationals in droves. Mr. Abaaoud—who would die several days after the Paris attacks in a police raid—drew on his experience as a battlefield logistical officer in Syria to launch a guerrilla-style ambush on unarmed civilians in the French capital.

The account emerging from French officials, witnesses and those who interacted with the suspected terrorists shows how the operation hinged on Mr. Abaaoud’s ability to use the tools of everyday modern life to lay the groundwork for the massacre. The ease with which he and his teams moved—all while avoiding detection by France’s security apparatus—suggests the challenges in identifying would-be terrorists and preventing further attacks in the fluid, digital and transnational world of today, especially when they are European citizens...
That doesn't inspire much confidence, now does it?

Keep reading.

Donald Trump Under Fire for Mocking Disabled New York Times Reporter (VIDEO)

At this point, who freakin' cares?

Donald Trump's going Donald Trump. All the outrage just keeps him in the news. It's brilliant, actually.

At the Washington Post, "Trump draws scornful rebuke for mocking reporter with disability."



Alessandra Ambrosio for Maxim (VIDEO)

Following up from earlier, "Alessandra Ambrosio Is Maxim's 'World's Sexiest Businesswoman...'"

Here's the video:



World's Sexiest Robot Steals the Spotlight at World Robot Exhibition

Well, flashback to September at Instapundit, "NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATT YGLESIAS: By 2050, human-on-robot sex will be more common than human-on-human sex, says report."

Well, I guess by then you'll have your pick of robot hotties, lol.

At London's Daily Mail, "The 'world's sexiest robot' revealed: Eerily life-like female android turns heads in China."


Laquan McDonald Found to Have PCP in His System

Well, there goes another angelic-black-protester-gunned-downed-by-racist-white-cops narrative.

See Robert Stacy McCain, "The #LaquanMcDonald Farce":
Laquan McDonald had PCP in his system on Oct. 20, 2014. We know this from the autopsy performed after McDonald, 17, decided to exercise his constitutional right to vandalize cars and stagger down the middle of Pulaski Road, brandishing a knife at the Chicago police officers who were trying to arrest him. The coroner’s conclusion was that the cause of Laquan’s death was institutional racism...
Keep reading.

RELATED: At the Chicago Tribune, "Protesters, joined by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union, marched down the Magnificent Mile on Black Friday in support of police shooting victim Laquan McDonald and called for the resignation of police Superintendent Garry McCarthy."

Plus, video at Ruptly, "Protesters disrupt Black Friday shopping demanding justice for Laquan McDonald."

Save 20% on Digital SLR Cameras

I don't know how well actual cameras go over these days, considering all the cellphones in use. (Frankly, I'm not all the photographer that I used to be either.)

In any case, shop for cameras at Amazon.

Plus, Canon EOS Rebel T5 Digital SLR Camera with EF-S 18-55mm IS II plus EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Bundle.

Holiday Book Buying for 2015

Suggestions, at Free Beacon, "It’s Not All Doom and Gloom: Holiday Book Buying for 2015":
Politics, history, literature, sci-fi, fantasy, classics, and more.
I don't see it there, but check out Diary of a Minecraft Zombie Book 1: A Scare of A Dare (Volume 1).

Maybe I'll get that for my kid, heh.

More books at Amazon.

Violent Black Friday Shopping: Walmart 'Riot' (VIDEO)

I suppose I should update my last post at bit, here, "Black Friday Has Lost Its Edge."

Turns out Black Friday's been pretty violent so far, especially at Walmart. See the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Black Friday 2015 fights: Videos show Kentucky mall brawl, Walmart 'riot,' more." And at that link, "People Riot Over Black Friday Sales at Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas."



Black Friday Has Lost Its Edge

Well, it hasn't completely lost its edge, what, with all the Black Friday brawls.

But with fewer outlets participating in the super-duper early-bird crush of pre-dawn sales, it's getting to be less of a thing.

At the New York Times, "Black Friday Falters as Consumer Behaviors Change":
In 1939, the nation’s largest retailers sent Franklin D. Roosevelt an urgent plea. Thanksgiving fell on the last day of November that year, giving merchants too few days before Christmas to unleash the season’s sales.

The holiday might be a time-honored tradition, but wouldn’t Mr. Roosevelt consider moving the day up by a week?

The president’s acquiescence to retailers helped cement the pre-eminence of the post-Thanksgiving sales rush, now known as Black Friday. The day became an annual ritual, a family affair — a shopping orgy that delivered big profits for retailers, as well as a lift to the entire economy.

Seven decades later, Black Friday has lost its distinctive edge. Tens of millions of Americans will still hit the malls this Friday. But the relentless race for holiday dollars has blunted the day’s oomph, as stores offer deep discounts weeks before Thanksgiving and year-round deals in stores and online are causing sales fatigue. Some fed-up shoppers cheered this year when the outdoors retailer, REI, declared it was opting out of Black Friday sales altogether.

On the eve of yet another Thanksgiving weekend, retail experts and economists are asking the question: Is Black Friday over?

“It definitely matters so much less than it’s mattered in the past,” said John J. Canally, chief economic strategist at LPL Research. “The last couple of years, ‘Black Friday disappoints’ has been the usual story.”

But contrary to doom-and-gloom predictions this holiday season, dwindling sales for the long Thanksgiving weekend (which now begins Thursday afternoon) do not necessarily signal a cautious consumer. Americans are generally spending just as much of their hard-earned dollars as in the past.

Overall consumer spending since the beginning of 2014 has risen at a rate of 3 percent after lackluster gains in 2012 and 2013, and most stores achieve decent profits, on an earnings per share basis, during their holiday quarter.

The decline of Black Friday instead points to a shift in the way consumers spend their money.

“They’re online,” Mr. Canally said. “And they’re spending more on experiences. A day at the spa, a baseball game, the ballet — rather than a sweater or a pair of socks that no one wants.”

As a result, retailers rang up $51 billion on the day after Thanksgiving last year, down from a peak of almost $60 billion in 2012, according to the San Diego-based private equity firm LPL Research, which crunched data from the National Retail Federation and comScore...
More.

Family of Milagros Perez Gets $10,000 Donation to Replace 4-Year-Old Girl’s Specialized Wheelchair (VIDEO)

It's almost impossible to believe that someone would actually steal this little girl's custom wheelchair. It cost the family $1,500 and would have been difficult for them to replace.

But now they're received a charitable gift, just in time for the holidays. That's the spirit.

At the O.C. Register, "$10,000 donation made to replace stolen specialized wheelchair for girl, 4, born without legs":


A Beverly Hills philanthropist has given $10,000 to the family of Milagros Perez to replace the 4-year-old girl’s specialized wheelchair, which was stolen from her Santa Ana home over the weekend, police said.

Cpl. Anthony Bertagna of the Santa Ana Police Department said Thursday that Joyce Brandman gave the family a check, delivered through NBC4, which aired a story about Perez and the missing wheelchair.

Brandman is the president of the Saul and Joyce Brandman Foundation, which gives funding to medical, educational and Jewish causes and organizations, including Chapman University, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Perez was born without legs among several other medical issues. She wasn’t expected to survive. Her mother gave her a name which means “miracles” in Spanish.

After the story of Milagros’ missing wheelchair appeared on news outlets, donations began pouring in...

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Amid Tight Security, Millions Turn Out for Macy's Thanksgiving Parade (VIDEO)

Most excellent.

At WSJ, "Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Draws Millions":

Extra police officers lined the route of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday, but the most visible first responder of the day was a firefighter: Harold, a 32-foot-tall balloon, guided by a contingent of New York’s Bravest.

With the Fire Department of New York celebrating its 150th anniversary, the department sent firefighters, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, fire inspectors and dispatchers to guide Harold from Manhattan’s Upper West Side down to Macy’s flagship store at 34th Street.

Among those holding Harold’s ropes were Mike Prior, of Merrick, N.Y., and his three sons, who are all firefighters.

For the Priors, the parade was a rare chance to collaborate, as on most days they are spread throughout the city. J.T., 28 years old, works in East New York; Kristian, 32, in Crown Heights; Matt, 36, in South Jamaica; and Mike, 62, works in Corona.

“It’s great, just being with my family,” said Kristian, who held the rope attached to Harold’s right heel.

The firefighter balloon was accompanied by a 1924 Ford Model T firetruck and the FDNY Pipes & Drums to celebrate the anniversary.

More than 3 million New Yorkers and visitors lined the parade route for the annual event, Macy’s said.

At a news conference before the parade began, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the turnout was evidence that New Yorkers wouldn't be intimidated by acts of terrorism abroad.

“The people of this city are voting with their feet,” he said.

In a lighter moment, the mayor joked that there is a tie for his favorite balloon: Snoopy and Underdog, who he said was “an inspiration for my political career.”

Police Commissioner William Bratton said Wednesday he believed the New York Police Department was sending a record 2,500 officers to the parade. Their presence was noticeable along the city blocks packed with families, as well as in the parade itself when a van containing armed personnel drove down Sixth Avenue.

Among those on the sidewalks for a view of the festivities was Orly Epstein, a 7-year-old who lives with her family on the Upper West Side.

“I think it’s the best parade so far,” she said. Her favorite balloon was Scrat, a saber-toothed squirrel from the “Ice Age” animated film franchise, a new addition to the 2015 parade...
More.

Enjoying Stephen Kotkin's Stalin

This book is incredible.

And it's supposed to be the first of three volumes!

At Amazon, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.

Stalin photo 11201866_10208431040516569_3693727945838748804_n_zpsgotupyem.jpg

Troops Get Hot Turkey Meal Overseas (VIDEO)

Generals served soldiers Thanksgiving dinner.

Via ABC News 10 San Diego:


Four New Laquan McDonald Videos Released

At the Chicago Tribune, via Memeorandum, "Four new Laquan McDonald shooting videos raise more questions."

And from last night, at CBS News 2 Chicago, "Additional Dashcam Videos Released Of Laquan McDonald Shooting."

Plus, ICYMI, "GRAPHIC: Police Release Video of Officer Shooting Laquan McDonald."

Families Host Camp Pendleton Marines Who Miss 'Hometown Chow' for Thanksgiving

So special.

At the O.C. Register:

They all have unique backgrounds, hailing from different states and serving in different fields.

But there is one thing that binds the men and women of the U.S. Marine Corps.

“They always love a good home-cooked meal,” said Cassie Craft, wife of Col. Joseph Craft, commanding officer of the Camp Pendleton’s Headquarters and Support Battalion. “The Marines always say, we miss the homemade chow.”

On Thursday evening, more than 40 Marines from the battalion will be bused to the Bear Creek community in Murrieta, where they’ll be matched up with families who will be providing a Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings.

Craft said 42 Marines had signed up for the trip as of Wednesday and more could be jumping on the 55-seat passenger coach, which was paid for by the Bear Creek Master Association.

The community, which counts a large number of retired military members as residents, did something similar last year, welcoming in 50 Marines from the base at the suggestion of Mary and Eddie Doidge.

The Doidges moved to the community from Corona about a year-and-a-half ago. After an October 2014 visit to the Vietnam Wall exhibit in Temecula, which found them reading names for two hours, they were inspired to do something more for the nation’s servicemen.

Mary Doidge is credited with coming up with the idea and she sent out a call for people to host.

Her neighbors -- a patriotic bunch that flies U.S. flags from the community’s light poles -- quickly backed the idea. It has grown this year to include 20 host families, each taking in two or four Marines.

Marilyn Spooner and her husband Roland Behny, a retired Marine, are hosting again this year and helping coordinate the community’s welcome party, which includes snack bags donated by Barons Market...
More.

Kelly Brook Has 'Marilyn Monroe Moment' at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards on Sunday

Whoo hoo!

The wind swept up and lifted her gown to reveal the tender under-areas, heh.

At London's Daily Mail, "Kelly Brook snaps a saucy selfie in her underwear... just days after suffering wardrobe malfunction on the red carpet."

At on Twitter, "Thank you @standardnews and @mrevgenylebedev for having me tonight!"

White House on Lockdown After (Another) Fence Jumper Caught (VIDEO)

At London's Daily Mail, "Obama Thanksgiving dinner put on lockdown as man draped in the American flag jumps the White House fence while the first family celebrate."

I guess this isn't the first time.

At CBS Evening News:



Holiday Gift Guides

In electronics, at Amazon.

More, Holiday Gifts.

And for him and her, Amazon Fashion Gift Guide.

Plus, Braun Series 7- 790cc Pulsonic Shaver System, Silver.

BONUS: From Perry Anderson, American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers.

#ParisAttacks Have Many in France Eager to Fight Back

Well, yes, when it really looks like they're about to kill you and your family, you'll fight back. Most people aren't suicidal, even Europeans, despite the suicidal policies of the European leadership.

At the New York Times, "Paris Attacks Have Many in France Eager to Join the Fight":
PARIS — The attacks by militants tied to the Islamic State less than two weeks ago in Paris have awakened a patriotic fervor in France not seen in decades.

Thousands of people have been flocking to sign up with the military. Those seeking to enlist in the French Army have quintupled to around 1,500 a day. Local and national police offices are flooded with applications. Even sales of the French flag, which the French rarely display, have skyrocketed since the attacks, which left 130 dead.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Col. Eric de Lapresle, a spokesman for the French Army’s recruiting service. “People are coming in and contacting us in droves through social media, using words like liberty, defense and the fight against terror.”

The surge in France, which no longer has conscription, mirrors what happened in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the two years after those terrorist assaults, the number of American active-duty personnel rose more than 38,000 to 1.4 million. The reasons many of those young Americans offered for volunteering to serve are echoed by some of their French counterparts today.

A few miles from where gunmen stormed restaurants and the Bataclan nightclub on Nov. 13, recruiters at the Fort Neuf de Vincennes in eastern Paris were deluged the next day with inquiries from young people, former military personnel and even retirees wanting to know whether and how soon they could take up arms.

Jeremy Moulin had been walking with friends near the Bois de Vincennes in Paris when the texts started flashing on his cellphone about the terrorist attacks. On Monday, 10 days after the mayhem, he went to Fort Neuf to ask how quickly he could be in uniform.

“These attacks motivated me even more to protect my country,” said Mr. Moulin, 23, a former legal intern who said he had often thought about joining the army but now is newly determined. “The terrorists struck in the heart of Paris. If we don’t stop them, they will do it again.”

The French Air Force, whose retaliatory airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Raqqa, Syria, were seen in images that went viral on the Internet, has likewise seen enlistment applications soar to about 800 a day from around 200, an air force spokesman said. And the French national police recruitment website was visited more than 13,500 times daily last week, compared with the usual 4,500, while applications jumped to 4,500 from 1,500.

“Young people especially identify closely with what happened,” Mr. de Lapresle said. “The targets at the Bataclan and elsewhere were French youth, and the young are saying they want to do something.”

A 17-year-old interviewed at Fort Neuf said the attacks had shaken him and his family, who live in a working-class Parisian suburb.

“I’m ready to go to war,” said the prospective enlistee, who asked to be called only by his first name, Jeremy, to protect his privacy. Dressed in a blue sports outfit, he had gone that afternoon to the military base for a rigorous physical test to determine his fitness. He applied a month before the attacks, but now, he said, “This has motivated me more than ever to be a soldier.”
Keep reading.

AoSHQ: Thanksgivingmanship

This is great, at Ace of Spades HQ, "Thanksgivingmanship: Your Guide to Surviving the Progressive Imbeciles Who Have Spent a Week Cramming on How to Survive You."

Plus, all in good fun. See, "On This Thanksgiving, I'm Grateful For the Gullible Goons of Salon."

Hat Tip: Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "HOW DOES IT HAPPEN THAT EVERYTHING HAS BECOME POLITICS? Dreading a Politicized Thanksgiving."

Timberland Men's Magic Glove with Touchscreen Technology

At Amazon, Timberland Men's Magic Glove.

Plus, GoPro HERO4 Session.

Also, Shop Holiday Home & Garden Gift Guide - Gifts for the Winter Decorator .

And from Michael Morell, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism - From al Qa'ida to ISIS.

Holly Williams Reports: Turkey and Russia Attempt to Ease Tensions After Jet Shootdown (VIDEO)

Well, they're not completely "easing tensions," according to the Wall Street Journal, "Russia Takes Aim at Turkish Economy Amid Fighter-Jet Spat."

But check out Holly Williams, reporting last night, for CBS Evening News:



Hot Californian Hailey Clauson for Sports Illustrated

She pretty cool.

BONUS: "Hailey Clauson In Nothing But Body Paint - Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2015 (VIDEO)."



Also at Drunken Stepfather, "HAILEY CLAUSON NUDE FOR KENNETH WILLARDT OF THE DAY," and "HAILEY CLAUSON FOR SOME CATALOG OF THE DAY."

Retailers Brace for Massive Holiday Onslaught

A shopping onslaught. Not a terrorist onslaught, or at least we hope.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Target and other retailers brace for holiday shopping onslaught":
At the Target store in Eagle Rock, workers are sprinting to get ready for the retail world's equivalent of the Super Bowl: Black Friday.

The store will throw open its doors on Thanksgiving at 6 p.m. to welcome crowds of shoppers eager to score deals after stuffing themselves with turkey and pie.

"It's a huge day for us," store manager Gilbert Diaz said of the Thursday-into-Friday shopathon. "It's probably the best time of the year."

In recent weeks, consumers have been sending mixed signals about how spendy they're feeling for the holidays.

Consumer confidence rose sluggishly in November, according to the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index, released Wednesday. The increase to 91.3 from 90 the month before was less than economists had forecast and down from the preliminary estimate of 93.1 earlier in the month.

Consumer spending managed only a modest 0.1% increase in October, the second straight month of weakness, even though personal income jumped 0.4%, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

That means people are saving rather than buying, economists said, with the silver lining being that they might be saving to spend on presents and holiday fripperies. Consumer spending isn't a frivolous measurement because it accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.

Macy's and Nordstrom said this month that slow shopper traffic led to disappointing third-quarter financial results and higher inventory levels. Retail sales in October edged up only slightly after two flat months, Commerce Department data show.

Target and other merchants need to do well on Black Friday, which traditionally kicks off the crucial holiday shopping season. Retailers can earn up to 40% of their annual revenue during the last few months of the year.

The National Retail Federation trade group forecasts that sales during November and December will climb 3.7% to $630.5 billion, slightly below the 4.1% growth of 2014.

To handle that kind of festive consumerism requires lots of planning at Target and retailers across the nation...
More.

Special Report's All Star Panel: Americans More Worried Than Ever About Terrorism (VIDEO)

Remember, "Fully 83 percent of registered voters say they believe a terrorist attack in the United States resulting in large casualties is likely in the near future..."

This is a very unusual period we're in, extremely reminiscent of the days and weeks after September 11th, 2001.

Here's a great segment from yesterday's Fox News Special Report:



UCLA Bruins Riding the Wave of College Football's Crosstown Rivalry in Los Angeles (VIDEO)

This is the time of year in college football I love the most. The college rivalries are awesome, and L.A.'s crosstown rivalry is more interesting than ever. The Pete Carroll era at USC is ancient history; the Trojans are corrupt shell of their former selves. Amazingly, I find myself warming up to UCLA's football program, and believe me, this is a first.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Beating USC turned tide for Jim Mora and UCLA, and Bruins are still riding the wave":


Security was sparse at UCLA's football practice Tuesday.

The workers the school employed to guard the practice field before the Bruins played rival USC in 2012 haven't been seen in a few years.

Even the rhetoric has been dialed back. Jim Mora, UCLA's coach, used to routinely refer to the Trojans as the team from "Southern Cal," a variation of University of Southern California that is universally disliked by the USC faithful.

He still slips in the term occasionally, though in recent days it has seemed like he was trying to avoid mentioning UCLA's next opponent by any name at all.

This is evolution.

When Mora arrived in Westwood, USC was firmly established on top in the crosstown rivalry. The Bruins were wannabes.

Since then, the momentum has flipped entirely. Mora-coached teams have three consecutive victories in series.

The teams meet again Saturday at the Coliseum, where two years ago Mora could be heard shouting "We own this town!" in the tunnel near the USC locker room.

"Beating USC validated Jim's position as the head coach," said Dan Guerrero, the UCLA athletic director who hired him. "It was important for him to flip that switch."

But ruling the home roost was only part of Mora's end game.

The winner Saturday advances to play in the Pac-12 Conference title game Dec. 5. From there, the Pac-12 champion goes to the Rose Bowl game...
More.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The Black Book of the American Left — Volume 5: Culture Wars

The new volume's out from David Horowitz, The Black Book of the American Left — Volume 5: Culture Wars.

Turkey’s Warning Shot

At the Wall Street Journal, "Putin may be testing NATO’s resolve, and the Turks need U.S. support":
A pair of Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24 over Turkish airspace on Tuesday, and Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a “stab in the back” that would have “serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.” This is what we mean when we say the last months of the Obama Administration will be the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War.

Turkish military officials said the Russian pilots ignored 10 warnings over five minutes to return to Syrian airspace before their plane was shot down. That rings true given Ankara’s warnings against previous intrusions. Russian planes twice violated Turkish airspace in early October, incidents NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said did “not look like an accident.” Around the same time a Russian MiG-29 locked its radar on a pair of Turkish jets patrolling the Syrian border for more than four minutes. Next a Russian-made drone entered Turkish airspace and was shot down. Moscow denies it was one of theirs.

More recently, the Turks summoned Russia’s ambassador to Ankara after an attack on ethnic Turkmen in Syria. “It was stressed that the Russian side’s actions were not a fight against terror, but they bombed civilian Turkmen villages and this could lead to serious consequences,” according to Turkey’s foreign ministry. This fits the Russian pattern of bombing enemies of the Assad regime except Islamic State—a useful reminder that Mr. Putin is not a fit partner in the coalition to fight ISIS.

The larger question is why Mr. Putin would risk provoking Turkey, with its powerful military and NATO ties. Part of the answer may lie with Moscow’s alliance with Iran and its Shiite Muslim proxies in Damascus and Beirut, who see themselves as competing with the Sunni Turks for regional dominance.

Mr. Putin may also be testing NATO cohesion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an impulsive leader who has alienated his allies with his autocratic instincts and Islamist sympathies. If Russia continues to prick Turkey and NATO fails to support Ankara, it will expose the hollowness of NATO’s Article 5 collective-defense obligations.

The Obama Administration failed to invoke Article 5 on France’s behalf after the Paris massacre. And on Tuesday President Obama said that while Turkey had the right to defend its airspace, his priority is to “discourage any escalation.” But what if Mr. Putin retaliates against Turkey? Mr. Obama should have said that the U.S. will stand with its NATO partner...
Good luck with that.

More at that top link.

Radical Parents, Despotic Children

From Bret Stephens, at WSJ, "Sooner or later, Orwellian methods on campus will lead to Orwellian outcomes":
“Liberal Parents, Radical Children,” was the title of a 1975 book by Midge Decter, which tried to make sense of how a generation of munificent parents raised that self-obsessed, politically spastic generation known as the Baby Boomers. The book was a case study in the tragedy of good intentions.

“We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling,” Miss Decter told the Boomers. “While you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices.”

Meager devices came to mind last week while reading the “Statement of Solidarity” from Nancy Cantor, chancellor of the Newark, N.J., campus of Rutgers University. Solidarity with whom, or what? Well, Paris, but that was just for starters. Ms. Cantor also made a point of mentioning lives lost to terrorist attacks this year in Beirut and Kenya, and children “lost at sea seeking freedom,” and “lives lost that so mattered in Ferguson and Baltimore and on,” and “students facing racial harassment on campuses from Missouri to Ithaca and on.”

And this: “We see also around us the scarring consequences of decade after decade, group after group, strangers to each other, enemies even within the same land, separated by an architecture of segregation, an economy of inequality, a politics of polarization, a dogma of intolerance.”

It is an astonishing statement. Ms. Cantor, 63, is a well-known figure in academia, a former president of Syracuse University who won liberal acclaim by easing admissions standards in the name of diversity and inclusiveness. At publicly funded Rutgers she earns a base salary of $385,000, a point worth mentioning given her stated concern for inequality. The Newark Star-Ledger praised her as a “perfect fit” for the school on account of her “exceptional involvement in minority recruitment and town-gown relations.”

Yet this Stanford Ph.D. (in psychology) appears to be incapable of constructing a grammatical sentence or writing intelligible prose. All the rhetorical goo about the “architecture of segregation” and “dogma of intolerance” rests on deep layers of mental flab. She is a perfect representative of American academia. And American academia is, by and large, idiotic.

That’s why I’m not altogether sorry to see the wave of protests, demands, sit-ins and cave-ins sweeping university campuses from Dartmouth to Princeton to Brandeis to Yale. What destroys also exposes; what they are trashing was already trashy. It’s time for the rest of the country sit up and take notice...
Well, the rest of the country that includes grownups might sit up and take notice. Remember, there aren't too many grownups on college campuses these days. Indeed, the conservative students at Claremont McKenna showed a lot more maturity than the school's administration.

But keep reading, in any case.

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Is World War Getting Closer? (VIDEO)

Last week a student asked me, in my American government class, whether the Paris attacks would bring on World War III. I gave the suggestion kind of a chuckle, and told her no, we'd be seeing a major escalation in the terror war, but we weren't yet quite near a world war.

Then yesterday morning as I was getting ready for classes, around 7:00am, I saw the news of the Russian fighter jet shot down by Turkey, and I thought, "Man, shit just got real over there." In class I spoke again to the student and suggested that if there was going to be World War III, it's crises like this, seemingly small at first, that have the potential to escalate into major conflict.

In any case, imagine my chagrin last night when Bill O'Reilly led off with the possibility of a world war. What a trip:


Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Turkey Shoots Down Russian Fighter Jet (VIDEO)

There's a huge live blog at the Telegraph UK, "Putin's fury after Turkey shoots down Russian jet, killing at least one pilot before rebels destroy rescue helicopter • President warns of 'serious consequences' but Obama says Turks have right to defend airspace":
There are dark corners of the Internet where Russian nationalists will argue the toss with Americans about whether the Su-24 is better than an F-16. I guess that argument was resolved today.
Also at WSJ, "Skies Darken for Accord on Syria With Turkish Downing of Russian Fighter":


Fallout of fatal incident threatens to destroy chances for grand coalition of international powers to change course of chaos in war-torn country.

When Turkey destroyed a Russian warplane it had warned away from its airspace, the fallout threatened to destroy chances for any grand coalition of international powers to change the course of chaos in Syria, at least for now.

The fatal incident in the skies Tuesday immediately escalated, and complicated, what had already been an intensely difficult enterprise—trying to bridge divides and corral longtime adversaries into a pact to combat their one shared enemy, Islamic State.

The Turkish-Russian aerial altercation quickly hardened the positions held by all sides. While the U.S. and its ally France dug in on their demands on resolving the Syrian conflict, Russia and its ally Iran adhered to theirs.

Aggravating the conflict was a war of words, with Mr. Putin leveling charges that Turkey, an ally of the U.S. and France, finances terrorism—accusations widely aired on Russian television in a daylong propaganda blitz.

Amid the strife, President Barack Obama and French President François Hollande presented a united front, speaking at the White House Tuesday after their first meeting since the Paris attacks. They outlined changes they said Russia must make to its military strategy in Syria and to its position on a political resolution to the conflict before the U.S.-led coalition, which includes Turkey, would cooperate with Moscow in the fight against Islamic State.

The demands made by the U.S. and French leaders—including the key issue of the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Russia supports—now have set the stage for a tense meeting between Mr. Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin scheduled for Thursday.

The downing of the Russian jet is likely to redraw the lines of engagement in Syria and affect Russians’ perceptions of their country’s intervention, analysts say.

“Hollande’s mission was to reach some kind of coordination with Russia,” said Alexei Makarkin, deputy director at Center for Political Technologies. “Now it is very, very doubtful that it is even possible to coordinate actions. The maximum that we can talk about now is avoiding shooting each other.”

Mr. Hollande’s visit to Moscow this week was supposed to be a crowning moment for Mr. Putin’s plan to bring more countries into his antiterrorism tent, as well as any potential rapprochement with the West after isolation over his intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.

But Mr. Obama, after expressing a new openness to coordinating with Russia since he met with Mr. Putin in Turkey last week, on Tuesday sought instead to isolate him.

“Russia right now is a coalition of two—Iran and Russia, supporting Assad,” he said. “We’ve got a global coalition organized. Russia is the outlier.”

At the same time, the U.S. and French leaders sought to demonstrate enhanced cooperation in their coalition.

Mr. Hollande said the immediate priority in the military campaign in Syria is to take back territory currently controlled by Islamic State and secure the border with Turkey.

Mr. Obama called on the European Union to implement an agreement that would require airlines to share passenger information.

“By targeting France, terrorists were targeting the world,” said Mr. Hollande.

Mr. Hollande’s stop in Washington was part of a whirlwind international tour to build a “single, grand coalition” of nations to take on Islamic State, which he called for last week.

French diplomats, however, have in recent days inched away from Mr. Hollande’s call for such a sweeping coalition. Instead officials in Paris have spoken of “coordination” in the strikes against Islamic State and have ruled out any shared command center for bombing targets in Syria...
And see, "Turkey Shoots Down Russian Military Jet Near Syrian Border."

New Books on the Salem Witch Trials

At Amazon.

See Benjamin C. Ray, Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692.

And Stacy Schiff, The Witches: Salem, 1692.

More, Books in Colonial History.

Ellie Goulding for Rollacoaster Magazine

At Studio Invisible UK, "ROLLACOASTER MAGAZINE: ELLIE GOULDING."

The photos are posted at Imgur, "Ellie Goulding Rollacoaster Magazine.


GRAPHIC: Police Release Video of Officer Shooting Laquan McDonald

At the Chicago Tribune, "Chicago releases dash-cam video of fatal shooting after cop charged with murder," and "A moment by moment account of what the Laquan McDonald video shows."

Also, at WSJ, "Chicago Officials Urge Calm as Police-Shooting Video Is Released":

CHICAGO—A city police officer was charged with murder Tuesday in the fatal shooting in 2014 of a black teenager, and hours later officials released a graphic video showing the white officer repeatedly firing at the 17-year-old.

The video of the shooting death of Laquan McDonald was released after a news conference held by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

City leaders said they understood the footage, taken from a camera on a police car dashboard, would be disturbing, but they urged the public not to resort to violence.

“I understand that people will be upset and will want to protest when they see this video,” Mr. Emanuel said, but added that the family of Mr. McDonald had urged people to conduct any protest peacefully.

Mr. McDonald died on Oct. 20, 2014, after officers responded to reports of a man breaking into vehicles.

The video shows Mr. McDonald jogging down the middle of a street. He slows to a walk as he approaches two police cruisers that have pulled in ahead of him. He is holding a small knife at his side.

Two officers hop out of one of the vehicles and point their guns at Mr. McDonald as the teen veers away from them.

Mr. McDonald is a car-lane’s-width away when Officer Jason Van Dyke opens fire, the bullets twisting the teen’s body and sending him to the ground. Puffs of smoke can be seen rising from his body, which prosecutors say is from the officer’s continued gunfire.

None of the other officers on the scene opened fire on Mr. McDonald. Police later recovered a knife with a three-inch blade, prosecutors said.

The video doesn’t show Mr. McDonald advancing on Mr. Van Dyke. An initial police version of the shooting, contained in the medical examiner’s report, said the teenager had lunged at the officers with a knife, leading an officer to open fire. A Chicago police spokesman didn’t respond to questions about that initial account.

The video’s release came after Mr. Van Dyke turned himself in to authorities Tuesday. The first-degree murder charge carries a potential penalty of life in prison.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said the decision to prosecute was made because Mr. Van Dyke hadn’t faced an immediate threat from Mr. McDonald and because he continued to fire at the teen as he lay on the ground after being shot. The youth was hit by 16 shots.

“Clearly this officer went overboard, and he abused his authority, and I don’t believe the force was necessary,” she said at a separate Tuesday news conference.

Mr. Van Dyke’s lawyer, Daniel Herbert, said he expects to prevail at trial. He has said the officer was protecting himself and others.

“This is a case that needs to be tried in a courtroom,” said Mr. Herbert. “This is a case that can’t be tried on the streets. It can’t be tried in the media. It can’t be tried on Facebook.”

Ms. Alvarez said that while she had made the decision to charge the officer internally in recent weeks, the announcement was moved up because of the imminent release of the video.

Mr. Van Dyke, who is 37-years-old, appeared in court Tuesday wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. A judge denied him bail, saying he wanted to view the video before setting bond.

Jeffrey Neslund, an attorney for Mr. McDonald’s family, said they were thankful that the officer had been charged and urged a peaceful response to the video’s release.

“We hope that Laquan will finally get justice,” Mr. Neslund said. “We hope that the city of Chicago will remain peaceful and any demonstrations will be nonviolent.”

The video was ordered released Wednesday by a circuit court judge who ruled last week the footage is subject to public-disclosure laws.

Mayor Emanuel, pastors and community activists have been meeting in recent days in the face of concerns the video could touch off violence in the nation’s third-largest city.

Cities such as Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore have experienced rioting, looting and vandalism in response to police shootings. But there also have been peaceful protests in many U.S. cities amid a growing call for changes in the use of police force, particularly against black men...
More.

Randall Munroe, Thing Explainer

At Amazon, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words.

Teenage Girl from Vienna Who Ran Away to Join Islamic State Reportedly Beaten to Death After Trying to Flee

Bad things happen when you join up with bad people.

She made a big mistake.

At the Telegraph UK, "Teenage Austrian 'poster girl for the Islamic State' killed by group for trying to escape":
Sabra Kesinovic, 17, was reportedly murdered after she was caught attempting to escape from Raqqa, Syria.
Sabra Kesinovic photo ad_148420533-e1448386266894_zpspxwxxq5d.jpg
An Austrian teenager who became a poster girl for the Islamic State has reportedly been beaten to death by the group after she was caught trying to leave Syria.

Sabra Kesinovic, 17, was murdered after she was caught attempting to escape from Raqqa, Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's (Isil) de facto capital in Syria, according to reports in two Austrian newspapers.

She appeared extensively in Isil propaganda material after leaving her native Vienna to join the group together with Sabina Selimovic, a 16-year-old friend.

The two teenagers were shown wearing Islamic headbands and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, surrounded by masked male jihadists.
They were also shown wearing full Islamic veils and pointing towards heaven.

The Austrian government refused to comment on reports in Österreich and Kronen Zeitung newspapers that Kesinovic had been beaten to death.

“We cannot comment on individual cases,” Thomas Schnöll, a spokesman for the foreign ministry said.

Both Austrian women are now believed to be dead, after reports Selimovic was killed in fighting in Syria last year.

Krone Zeitung newspaper quoted an unnamed Tunisian woman who lived with the two Austrians in Raqqa as saying Kesinovic was murdered.

The Tunisian, who was also an Isil volunteer for a woman, later escaped.

Kesinovic and Selimovic were both children of Bosnian refugees who fled to Austria from the war in their country during the nineties.

Their families reported them missing after they disappeared from their homes in Vienna last year.

They reportedly left a note for their families which read: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah and we will die for him.”
They were traced as taking a flight to the Turkish capital of Ankara, and travelling on to the region of Adana, close to the border with Syria.

It emerged they had joined Isil after Kesinovic telephoned her sister from Syria to let her know she was alright.

She reportedly wrote home late last year telling family she wanted to return and that she has had enough of the extreme violence she witnessed every day.

It is believed they both married Isil jihadists in Syria. Selimovic later denied reports she was pregnant in an exchange of SMSes to the magazine Paris Match, and claimed she was happy in Syria.

“Here I can really be free. I can practise my religion. I couldn’t do that in Vienna,” she told the magazine.

Reports of her death first emerged last year from David Scharia, an expert at the UN security council’s counter-terrorism committee...
More.

Syrians are a Nation of Terrorist Supporters

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "10,000 Syrian refugees mean 1,300 ISIS supporters":
Syria is a terror state. It didn’t become that way overnight because of the Arab Spring or the Iraq War.

Its people are not the victims of American foreign policy, Islamic militancy or any of the other fashionable excuses. They supported Islamic terrorism. Millions of them still do.

They are not the Jews fleeing a Nazi Holocaust. They are the Nazis trying to relocate from a bombed out Berlin.

These are the cold hard facts.

ISIS took over parts of Syria because its government willingly allied with it to help its terrorists kill Americans in Iraq. That support for Al Qaeda helped lead to the civil war tearing the country apart.

The Syrians were not helpless, apathetic pawns in this fight. They supported Islamic terrorism.

A 2007 poll showed that 77% of Syrians supported financing Islamic terrorists including Hamas and the Iraqi fighters who evolved into ISIS. Less than 10% of Syrians opposed their terrorism.

Why did Syrians support Islamic terrorism? Because they hated America.

Sixty-three percent wanted to refuse medical and humanitarian assistance from the United States. An equal number didn’t want any American help caring for Iraqi refugees in Syria.

The vast majority of Syrians turned down any form of assistance from the United States because they hated us. They still do. Just because they’re willing to accept it now, doesn’t mean they like us.

If we bring Syrian Muslims to America, we will be importing a population that hates us.

The terrorism poll numbers are still ugly. A poll this summer found that 1 in 5 Syrians supports ISIS.  A third of Syrians support the Al Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. Since Sunnis are 3/4rs of the population and Shiites and Christians aren’t likely to support either group, this really means that Sunni Muslim support for both terror groups is even higher than these numbers make it seem.

And even though Christians and Yazidis are the ones who actually face ISIS genocide, Obama has chosen to take in few Christians and Yazidis. Instead 98.6% of Obama’s Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims.

This is also the population most likely to support ISIS and Al Qaeda.

But these numbers are even worse than they look. Syrian men are more likely to view ISIS positively than women. This isn’t surprising as the Islamic State not only practices sex slavery, but has some ruthless restrictions for women that exceed even those of Saudi Arabia.  (Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front, however, mostly closes the gender gap getting equal support from Syrian men and women.)

ISIS, however, gets its highest level of support from young men. This is the Syrian refugee demographic.

In the places where the Syrian refugees come from, support for Al Qaeda groups climbs as high as 70% in Idlib, 66% in Quneitra, 66% in Raqqa, 47% in Derzor, 47% in Hasakeh, 41% in Daraa and 41% in Aleppo.

Seventy percent support for ISIS in Raqqa has been dismissed as the result of fear. But if Syrians in the ISIS capital were just afraid of the Islamic State, why would the Al Nusra Front, which ISIS is fighting, get nearly as high a score from the people in Raqqa? The answer is that their support for Al Qaeda is real.

Apologists will claim that these numbers don’t apply to the Syrian refugees. It’s hard to say how true that is. Only 13% of Syrian refugees will admit to supporting ISIS, though that number still means that of Obama’s first 10,000 refugees, 1,300 will support ISIS. But the poll doesn’t delve into their views of other Al Qaeda groups, such as the Al Nusra Front, which usually gets more Sunni Muslim support.

And there’s no sign that they have learned to reject Islamic terrorism and their hatred for America...
Still more.

Obama's New Terror Plan: 'Travel at your own risk...'

Ed Driscoll has the New York Daily News cover story, at Instapundit, "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS HEADLINE: “BAM’S NEW TERROR PLAN: BE AFRAID:”


KIND — Nuts & Spices, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, 1.4 Ounce, 12 Count

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Plus, 12 Days of Deals - Office Products.

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On sale, 40% Off - Brother SE400 Combination Computerized Sewing and 4x4 Embroidery Machine With 67 Built-in Stitches, 70 Built-in Designs, 5 Lettering Fonts.

And for under the tree, from Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South.

College 'Crybullies'

From the letters, at the Los Angeles Times, "Readers React: Telling college 'crybullies' to grow thicker skin":
Protesting students are exercising their rights of free speech. However, these same students do not recognize the rights of those who disagree with them. Polls have suggested that roughly half of students in many universities favor speech codes and “trigger warnings” alerting them to issues that might offend their sensibilities.

Increasingly there is a totalitarian bent on university campuses, which have become a breeding ground for victimhood. Administrators lack the will to stand up to these tactics.

The real world is not so sanitized and safe. We are doing these young people no service to coddle them. They need to learn to stand up for themselves in debate, not shut down the opposition with demonization.

Lisa Niedenthal
Los Angeles
RELATED: From Roger Kimball, at WSJ, "The Rise of the College Crybullies."

The Rape of Sweden

Condell seems to produce one vlog per per month, so it's probably still a week or two until he comes out with his next one, no doubt on the Paris attacks.

But we'll see. We'll see.

This one's perhaps hard-hitting enough, man.



ICYMI, The German War

From Nicholas Stargardt, The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945.

The German War photo 12279106_10208406113333405_3686314134360095622_n_zpslqmnwofe.jpg

What the 'Hunger Games' Movies Say About Feminism — and War

At the Los Angeles Times, "The Katniss Factor":
Throughout the new "Hunger Games" movie, the fourth and final in the dystopian series, heroine Katniss Everdeen's name is intoned with grave sincerity. The manipulative President Snow whispers it, as one does of a worthy rival; her battle partner and occasional romantic interest Gale Hawthorne utters it to suggest a noble comrade.

But the most telling invocation comes early in the film. "It's Katniss," belts out Peeta Mellark, her other battle partner and romantic interest, compromised and angry as he lies in a hospital bed. "It's [all] because of Katniss."

Much has indeed happened thanks to Katniss, a name you couldn't dream up if you tried and now can't imagine not existing. The character has become a kind of cultural shorthand — an archetype, someone who has deepened our understanding of armed conflicts and paved the way for a political movement. And that's just off the screen.

As the Lionsgate franchise winds down with this week's release of "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2," the film and its lead character reside in a far different world than the one in which they began. And many of those differences came because of "The Hunger Games" films.

There is, of course, the money. The franchise that started with novelist Suzanne Collins and was largely directed by Francis Lawrence has taken in $2.3 billion globally, with more on the way. Every year since 2012, at least 35 million tickets have been bought in the United States to a new "Hunger Games" movie. More Americans on average have come out to see Katniss in a given film than they have Harry Potter.

But the effects go beyond sheer popularity. As played by Jennifer Lawrence, Katniss, with her bow and arrow, has inspired a generation to lift up their weapons, both literally (the surge in archery lessons) and otherwise. She is often unsmiling, efficient and "male-like," by the chestnutty Hollywood definition, in which female characters are rarely foremost and even less frequently autonomous.

Before "Hunger Games," Hollywood somehow couldn't conceive of a fully formed, villain-thwacking heroine in a top-tier franchise. Sure, some swings had been taken. But they were exceptions — pre-made stars in one-offs (Angelina Jolie in "Salt" or "Wanted") or one-dimensional types in B-movie serials (Milla Jovovich's "Resident Evil" or Kate Beckinsale's "Underworld").

Katniss, on the other hand, was, almost from the start, confident but complicated, bold but human. "She's just so relatable and she's not a superhero — she feels real, she feels lost, she feels reluctant," said director Francis Lawrence. "She doesn't want to be a leader, she doesn't want to be part of a rebellion."

If the character was sometimes caught in a love triangle, a Bridget Jones touch that doesn't exactly scream postfeminist consciousness, she spent much of the rest of the time knocking away at glass ceilings, the Hollywood lady hero whose power comes from thoughts and actions more than sexuality...
Still more.

CNN, Fox, and Other TV Networks Met to Discuss How to Respond to Donald Trump's Attempts to Restrict Press at Events, Including Blacklisting Reporters

They're not used to this kind of treatment. They've been feted as royalty for so long under the Democrats.

At Politico, "TV networks hold conference call to discuss Trump treatment":
Representatives from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN discussed how embeds and reporters from outlets are being treated, including being pushed into media "pens." The Washington Post was first to report on the conference call.

It's unlikely a formal unified message will be sent to the Trump campaign unless all the networks agree on a response.
The plan, according to one network news executive familiar with the discussions, is to have a call with Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and work through their issues.

The issues being discussed, the executive said, involve access to attendees at Trump events. Often reporters are able to speak with attendees before an event is set to begin, but lately reporters have found themselves confined to media-only areas by Trump staffers.

"The effort in the Trump campaign is to limit any kind of interaction between our reporters and the people attending the Trump events. So we'd like to have some access to folks," the executive said.

But the executive cautioned that the talks were being handled by the networks' political units and were not rising to high executive levels. Though media has complained about access with other campaigns, the executive said this was the first coordinated effort of its kind thus far this cycle...
Just think: a candidate who doesn't need these flacks.

Can the Democrats Keep Us Safe?

At Instapundit, "NO. NEXT QUESTION? New RNC ad: Can these Democratic weaklings be trusted to keep America safe?"

Click through for the new RNC ad.

France Can't Keep Tabs on 10,000 Radicalized Young Muslims (VIDEO)

From last night's CBS Evening News:


Magical Thinking About #ISIS

A far left-wing take on the attacks, from Adam Shatz, at the London Review of Books:
Before the Lebanese civil war, Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. Today, Paris looks more and more like the Beirut of Western Europe, a city of incendiary ethnic tension, hostage-taking and suicide bombs. Parisians have returned to the streets, and to their cafés, with the same commitment to normality that the Lebanese have almost miraculously exhibited since the mid-1970s. Même pas peur, they have declared with admirable defiance on posters, and on the walls of the place de la République. But the fear is pervasive, and it’s not confined to France. In the last few weeks alone, Islamic State has carried out massacres in Baghdad, Ankara and south Beirut, and downed a Russian plane with 224 passengers. It has taunted survivors with threats of future attacks, as if its deepest wish were to provoke violent retaliation.

Already traumatised by the massacres in January, France appears to be granting that wish. ‘Nous sommes dans la guerre,’ François Hollande declared, and he is now trying to extend the current state of emergency by amending the constitution. Less than 48 hours after the event, a new round of airstrikes was launched against Raqqa, in concert with Russia. With a single night’s co-ordinated attacks, IS – a cultish militia perhaps 35,000 strong, ruling a self-declared ‘caliphate’ that no one recognises as a state – achieved something France denied the Algerian FLN until 1999, nearly four decades after independence: acknowledgment that it had been fighting a war, rather than a campaign against ‘outlaws’. In the unlikely event that France sends ground troops to Syria, it will have handed IS an opportunity it longs for: face to face combat with ‘crusader’ soldiers on its own soil.

Recognition as a war combatant is not IS’s only strategic gain. It has also spread panic, and pushed France further along the road to civil strife. The massacre was retribution for French airstrikes against IS positions, but there were other reasons for targeting France. Paris is a symbol of the apostate civilisation IS abhors – a den of ‘prostitution and vice’, in the words of its communiqué claiming responsibility for the attacks. Not only is France a former colonial power in North Africa and the Middle East but, along with Britain, it helped establish the Sykes-Picot colonial borders that IS triumphantly bulldozed after capturing Mosul. Most important, it has – by proportion of total population – more Muslim citizens than any other country in Europe, overwhelmingly descendants of France’s colonial subjects. There is a growing Muslim middle class, and large numbers of Muslims marry outside the faith, but a substantial minority still live in grim, isolated suburbs with high levels of unemployment. With the growth rate now at 0.3 per cent, the doors to the French dream have mostly been closed to residents of the banlieue. Feelings of exclusion have been compounded by discrimination, police brutality and by the secular religion of laïcité, which many feel is code for keeping Muslims in their place. Not surprisingly, more than a thousand French Muslims have gone off in search of glory on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq. Most of these young jihadis became radicalised online not in the mosque. Some, like the perpetrators of the attacks in January and November, have histories of arrest and time spent in prison; about 25 per cent of IS’s French recruits are thought to be converts to Islam. What most of the jihadis appear to have in common is a lack of any serious religious training: according to most studies, there is an inverse relationship between Muslim piety and attraction to jihad. As Olivier Roy, the author of several books on political Islam, recently said, ‘this is not so much the radicalisation of Islam as the Islamicisation of radicalism.’

By sending a group of French – and Belgian – citizens to massacre Parisians in their places of leisure, IS aims to provoke a wave of hostility that will end up intensifying disaffection among young Muslims. Unlike the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the 13 November attacks were universally condemned. The victims were of every race, the murders were indiscriminate, and many Muslims live in Seine-Saint-Denis, where the bombing at the the Stade de France took place. In theory, this could have been a unifying tragedy. Yet it is Muslims who will overwhelmingly bear the brunt of the emergency measures and of the new rhetoric of national self-defence. Fayçal Riyad, a Frenchman of Algerian parents, who teaches at a lycée in Aubervilliers, a few hundred metres from where the 18 November raid against the fugitive attackers took place, pointed out the change in the air. ‘In his January speech,’ Riyad said, ‘Hollande clearly insisted on the distinction between Islam and terrorism. This time he not only abstained from doing so, but in a way he did the opposite by speaking of the necessity of closing the frontiers, insinuating that the attackers were foreigners, but above all in echoing the National Front’s call for stripping binational French people of their nationality if they’re found guilty of acts against the interests of the country. So that is aggravating our fear.’ Marine Le Pen, whose National Front expects to do well in the regional elections in December, is exultant. But anti-Muslim sentiment is hardly confined to the far right. There has been talk in centre-right circles of a Muslim fifth column; a leading figure in Sarkozy’s party has proposed interning 4000 suspected Islamists in ‘regroupment camps’.

IS achieved a further strategic objective by linking the massacre to the refugee crisis. The memory of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy from Kobani who was found drowned on a Turkish beach, has now been eclipsed by a passport found near the corpse of one of the attackers. That this assailant made his way to France through Greece, carrying a passport in the name of a dead Syrian fighter, suggests careful planning. The purpose is not merely to punish Syrians who have fled the caliphate, but to dampen European compassion for the refugees – already strained by unemployment and the growth of right-wing, anti-immigrant parties. Marine Le Pen called for an immediate halt to the inflow of Syrian refugees; Jeb Bush suggested that only Christian Syrians be admitted into the United States. If the West turns its back on the Syrian refugees, the effect will be to deepen further their sense of abandonment, another outcome that would be highly desirable to IS.

It is hard not to feel sentimental about the neighbourhoods of the 10th and the 11th, where IS attacked Le Petit Cambodge and the Bataclan theatre. I know these neighbourhoods well; a number of my journalist friends live there. In a city that has become more gentrified, more class-stratified and exclusionary, they are still reasonably mixed, cheap and welcoming, still somehow grungy and populaire. Odes to their charms have flooded the French press, as if the attacks were primarily an assault on the bobo lifestyle. ‘They have weapons. Fuck them. We have champagne,’ the front page of Charlie Hebdo declared. But as the journalist Thomas Legrand noted on France Inter, ‘the reality is that we have champagne … and also weapons.’

France has been using those weapons more frequently, more widely, and more aggressively in recent years. The shift towards a more interventionist posture in the Muslim world began under Sarkozy, and became even more pronounced under Hollande, who has revealed himself as an heir of Guy Mollet, the Socialist prime minister who presided over Suez and the war in Algeria. It was France that first came to the aid of Libyan rebels, after Bernard-Henri Lévy’s expedition to Benghazi. That adventure, once the US got involved, freed Libya from Gaddafi, but then left it in the hands of militias – a number of them jihadist – and arms dealers whose clients include groups like IS. France has deepened its ties to Netanyahu – Hollande has made no secret of his ‘love’ for Israel – and criminalised expressions of support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement...
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