Anti-Torture Protesters Arrested in Front of Dick Cheney's Home

Priorities.

At the Hill:

Police arrested two anti-torture protesters in front of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s home in McLean, Va. on Saturday.

About 20 protesters from the anti-war group Code Pink, some wearing orange prison in jumpsuits, walked onto Cheney’s property to mark the 14th anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, Reuters reported.

Police asked the group of protesters to leave and all obliged except for two members of the group, who were then arrested on trespassing charges.

Code Pink said Tighe Barry, 57, and Eve Tetaz, 83, were unfairly singled out for arrest.

Tighe Barry of @codepink arrested outside of Dick Cheneys house! Police won't say why! 83 y/o woman arrested too!! pic.twitter.com/y22QZmaCTC

— CODEPINK (@codepink) January 10, 2015

Arson Attack at Hamburg Morgenpost for Publishing #CharlieHebdo Cartoons

It begins.

At London's Daily Mail, "BREAKING NEWS: Arsonists attack office of German newspaper that printed Charlie Hebdo cartoons."

Stop Lying: Media Are Censoring Charlie Hebdo Out of Fear of Islam

"It’s time to cut the B.S."

Argues Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist:

It’s time to stop lying about why many in the media don’t publish these cartoons. It’s not out of respect for religion, something the media could actually use a great deal more of.

It’s not about causing offense to many, or papers wouldn’t be running photos on the front page of gay couples making out or announcements of same-sex unions or what not. I don’t recall the New York Times discussing deference to pious families in Brooklyn when those began in 2002.

There’s one reason and one reason only why we’re not seeing any pictures of Muhammad (and contrary to what many in the media mindlessly tell you, depicting Muhammad is a debated issue among Muslims).

Journalists are absolutely terrified of Islamic extremists...

RTWT.

#ParisAttacks: Girlfriend Hayat Boumeddiene Likely in Syria

At the Wall Street Journal, "Partner of Paris Gunman Believed to Be in Syria: Hayat Boumeddiene Is Believed to Have Left France on Jan. 2":

PARIS—French authorities believe Hayat Boumeddiene, the girlfriend of the gunman who was killed during a police raid at a kosher store on Friday, left France Jan. 2 and has reached Syria, people familiar with the matter said Saturday.

Police have been hunting for Ms. Boumeddiene since her partner, Amedy Coulibaly, was identified as the alleged shooter of a policewoman on Thursday and stormed a Parisian kosher grocery on Friday, leaving four hostages dead.

French prosecutors have described Ms. Boumeddiene as a dangerous individual who has trained to use firearms.

Ms. Boumeddiene left France and crossed into Syria from Turkey, the people said, before the French capital was plunged into a three-day spree of violence that began with the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine Wednesday.

A senior Turkish official said Ms. Boumeddiene flew to Turkey with one companion on Jan. 2, landing at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen airport. The official would not name her travel companion but said Turkish intelligence officials were in constant contact with their French counterparts.

The pair stayed in Istanbul until Jan. 4, when they flew to the southeastern city of Urfa, and most likely headed to Syria, the official said.

“After Urfa, we lost track of them... most likely they crossed into Syria,” the official said.

“She used no ports or no vehicles to exit turkey that we know of,” he added.

The city of Urfa is known as a way station for foreigners seeking to reach the Syrian battlefield...

More.

I Am Not Charlie Hebdo

Here's a "not Charlie Hedbo" to which I can relate.

From David Brooks, at the New York Times:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium...

Keep reading.

Leaked Newsroom Emails Reveal Al Jazeera Fury Over Global Support for #CharlieHebdo

Yeah, lots of Muslims around the world are showing solidarity with the terrorists.

See Blazing Cat Fur on Al Jazeera, "'I AM NOT CHARLIE'."

Plus, see the Los Angeles Times, "Muslim leaders condemn French massacre, but on the street, disagreement."

Undetected French Hostages Hid in Kosher Store's Freezer, Scared of Freezing to Death Before Police Could Kill Terrorist

Harrowing.

Something that they'll never forget, and thank God they didn't die from the cold.

At WaPo, "In a kosher grocery store in Paris, terror takes a deadly toll":

PARIS – For more than four hours, Noemi shivered through the biting chill and the abject terror of being hidden away inside the refrigerated cellar of a kosher grocery store as a murderous gunman rampaged above.

The cold-storage room had been her salvation when she dashed inside Friday afternoon, escaping the bullets that felled others. But as night fell, she huddled with fellow hostages and worried that it would become her death chamber.

“We’re very afraid, and we’re very cold,” Noemi told a friend, 29-year-old Anthony Ravaux, in a phone call just after 5 p.m. “Tell the police to hurry.”

Minutes later, right at sundown, dozens of heavily armed officers stormed the store in a furious assault of smoke, sound and fire. The hostages made a desperate run for the doors as officers shot the gunman dead, ending the standoff....

The hostage-taking began just after noon, when Amedy Coulibaly, 32, a French citizen of Senegalese descent, walked into the store and began to shoot. The attack played out hours before the start of the Jewish Sabbath on Friday night, a particularly busy time for a kosher shop.

As police quickly established a cordon around the building, residents on the outside were left to wonder what had become of friends and colleagues trapped within.

Two women who worked at the store but were off at the time of the attack sobbed as they frantically dialed the phone numbers of friends. One said she had received a call from a colleague who could only get out the words “people are shooting” before the line was cut.

“They were only targeted because they were Jewish,” the woman, who declined to give her name, said of her colleagues. “They’re just normal people trying to do their jobs.”...

There were 16 hostages, including children, Coulibaly told the station. He boasted that he had already killed four people, and police said he was threatening to shoot more if they staged a raid against his accomplices in Dammartin.

In fact, Coulibaly had significantly more hostages than he knew: the ones who had dashed into the cold-storage room had apparently escaped his detection.

But Noemi and the others huddled inside had no way of knowing that. They felt a jolt of apprehension with every sound from above, and they scoured the storage-room floor for empty boxes and other possible places to hide.

“Don’t panic,” Ravaux told Noemi, whose last name he did not want to reveal, when she reached him by phone. “The police will do their best.”

Ravaux, who had walked out of the store five minutes before Coulibaly burst in, told her to conserve her phone’s battery, and the two hung up.

Within minutes, the streets echoed with three loud booms as police tossed stun grenades and began their assault. After a pause, the earth shook with 30 seconds of sustained gunfire. Blocks away, parents shepherded screaming children into the shelter of nearby doorways.

And then, silence.

More than an hour after the raid, Ravaux said he believed that his friend had survived. But he could not reach her by phone.

“I hope she’s with the police,” he said.

Officials said that the Paris raid and a nearly simultaneous shootout with the Kouachi brothers in Dammartin left all three assailants dead, allowing the surviving hostages to go free. In his speech to the nation, Hollande praised law enforcement officers for their work and said France would not be divided by racism or anti-Semitism.

But on the streets of Porte de Vincennes, residents expressed a gnawing fear that the events of the past three days had unleashed a wave of violence with no end.

“This is only the beginning for what’s awaiting France,” said Sam Cohen, a 22-year-old who wore a black hoodie atop his black kippah. “Everyone’s going to grab a weapon, and there will be more and more dead every day.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls Declares 'War' on Radical Islam

Well, thank goodness somebody over there's declaring war on radical jihad.

At NYT, "French Premier Declares ‘War’ on Radical Islam as Paris Girds for Rally" (via Memeorandum):

PARIS — Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared Saturday that France was at war with radical Islam after the harrowing sieges that led to the deaths of three gunmen and four hostages the day before. New details emerged about the bloody final confrontations, and security forces remained on high alert.

“It is a war against terrorism, against jihadism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom, solidarity,” Mr. Valls said during a speech in Évry, south of Paris.

The authorities started the day hunting for the companion of one of the killers, only to learn later that she appeared to have fled to Turkey and then probably to Syria days before the first assault in Paris on Wednesday. The police had suspected that the woman — Hayat Boumeddiene, 26, the girlfriend of Amedy Coulibaly, believed to be one of the gunmen — might have played a role in one or more of the attacks.

“We are 99 percent sure that she traveled to Syria from Urfa,” said a Turkish intelligence official, referring to a city in southern Turkey. “There is no evidence that suggests she was involved in the terrorist attacks in France this week.”

France remained on edge a day after security forces killed Mr. Coulibaly, who the police said was responsible for the deaths of four hostages at a kosher supermarket near the Porte de Vincennes in eastern Paris on Friday, and Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, the brothers who fatally shot 12 people on Wednesday in and around the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper.

The French government said it would put 500 additional troops on the streets over the weekend amid preparations for a giant unity rally in Paris on Sunday. A number of European officials said they would attend, including Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey, the most prominent Muslim leader scheduled to be there, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people marched in Paris, Toulouse, Nice and other cities in a show of solidarity, and rallies were held in places as far away as Madagascar and Bangui, Central African Republic.

Top ministers in the French government held an emergency session to discuss measures to prevent a repeat of the attacks, which shocked the country and raised questions about why law enforcement agencies had failed to thwart terrorism suspects well known to the police and intelligence services.

Some of the surviving hostages shared chilling accounts of their ordeals at the hands of heavily armed captors, who they said had seemed prepared to die as police forces amassed outside the kosher supermarket and a printing plant northeast of Paris that the Kouachi brothers had seized early Friday.

Mr. Coulibaly, in an interview with a French television outlet not long before he was killed, claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State, which has its headquarters in northern Syria. Officials identified him as the gunman in the fatal shooting of a female police officer in a Paris suburb on Thursday.

The crisis and its aftermath presented a major challenge to President François Hollande and his government, which are facing deep religious and cultural rifts in a nation with a rapidly growing Muslim population while simultaneously coping with the security threats stemming from Islamic extremists. Large numbers of French citizens have been traveling to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Mr. Hollande, appealing for unity, has warned against seeing Muslims as the enemy, and Mr. Valls called again on Saturday for citizens to join the rally planned for Sunday.

“There needs to be a firm message about the values of the republic and of secularism,” Mr. Valls said in Évry. “Tomorrow, France and the French can be proud. Everyone must come tomorrow.”...

I think they need to figure out how they're going to deal with Islam. It's not "radical" Islam. It's Islam. Smiting the infidels is in the Koran. Get that and they might be going somewhere.

More at the link.

French Intelligence Dropped Surveillance of Kouachi Brothers for 'Lack of Resources'

Hmm...

A "lack of resources," eh?

I'm sure a lot of Frenchmen are thinking perhaps some of Hollande's high-tax revenues should have been put to counterterrorism.

At WSJ, "Overburdened French Dropped Surveillance of Brothers: Intelligence Services Had Brothers Under Watch After Yemen Trip But Lacked Resources to Continue":

The terror attacks in Paris that have killed 17 people in three days this week represent one of the worst fears—and failures—of counterterrorist officials: a successful plot coordinated by people who had once been under surveillance but who were later dropped as a top priority.

The U.S. provided France with intelligence showing that the gunmen in the Charlie Hebdo massacre received training in Yemen in 2011, prompting French authorities to begin monitoring the two brothers, according to U.S. officials.

But that surveillance of Said and Chérif Kouachi came to an end last spring, U.S. officials said, after several years of monitoring turned up nothing suspicious.

“These guys were laying low for an extended period of time so they could pull off something,” said a U.S. official.

The brothers fell through the surveillance net because of a lack of resources, current and former French officials said.

“We have to make choices,” said Christian Prouteau, the founder and former head of the GIGN, an elite counterterrorism force that reports to the French Defense Ministry. “It’s the people coming from Syria that worried us.”

France boasts vast intelligence-gathering operations, which excel at recruiting operatives across North Africa and the Middle East. The tentacles of French intelligence also reach deep into the impoverished suburbs of French cities home to Europe’s biggest Muslim population.

But for Yemen, France relies on partner spy agencies, particularly those of the U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, to collect and pass on on-the-ground intelligence.

That’s what Washington did after the Kouachis went to the Arab country notorious as an al Qaeda safe haven and as the home of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate with the best track record at launching sophisticated and aggressive terror plots against Western targets.

American spies told the French that both brothers, 34-year-old Said and 32-year-old Chérif, had traveled to Yemen in 2011 to receive weapons training from AQAP.

French officials had already been aware of Chérif’s terror connections. He had served a terrorism sentence in France in 2008, and French law enforcement had suspected him in an additional terrorist-related incident in 2011 but never charged him. It is unclear whether Said had a profile with French law enforcement before traveling to Yemen.

When the two returned to France, U.S. and French officials said, French intelligence eventually ran out of resources to keep their eye on them.

By 2013, France was struggling to monitor a flood of citizens suspected of traveling—or planning to travel—to Syria and Iraq. That number has now surpassed 1,000, officials said.

Additionally, much of the French reconnaissance drone fleet was ordered to North Africa, where French troops are helping to fight Islamist insurgencies in Mali and other countries.

Meanwhile, the Kouachis had gone quiet, raising no red flags, these officials said.

“You can’t monitor everything with the same quality and that’s why we exchange information,” said a French official. The U.S., in turn, relies heavily on France for intelligence from Francophone countries in Africa, the official said.

Western intelligence officials said the sheer number of French nationals under surveillance for possible ties with terrorist groups is making it harder for officials to determine who poses an authentic threat.

“One of the big problems with counterterrorism policy is that the haystack is getting bigger and bigger, and we still need to find that one needle,” said Benoit Gomis, a terrorism analyst with the London-based think tank Chatham House who formerly worked at the French Defense Ministry.

Part of the lessons learned in the aftermath of the attack depends on the intelligence estimate of whether AQAP inspired or more directly controlled the Paris terror attacks.

On a recruitment level, the Kouachis’ relationship with AQAP promises to bring a resurgence of acclaim among Islamic extremists for al Qaeda, which many Western terrorism analysts said has been scrambling to restore its image as the pre-eminent global jihadist organization in the midst of competition with Islamic State.

The group’s affiliation with the attacks, however, is also likely to stoke fears among Western intelligence agencies about the possibility of sleeper cells in other countries.

Jeez, let's face it. France is freakin' overwhelmed by the massive influx and outflow of Muslim jihadists. Things won't be getting better any time soon. No surprise, but Jews will be hightailing it out of France faster than you can say Kristallnacht.

Still more.

#ParisAttacks: Saïd and Chérif Kouachi 'Networked' with Amedy Coulibaly in Jihadist Group from 19th Arrondissement

From Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs, "Paris Jihad: Muslims in Hebdo Slaughter and Kosher Store Killings Met in Paris."

They were born in Paris. Spoke fluent French, their native language. Trained in Yemen. Followed and were inspired and financed by American imam Anwar Awlaki.

They would meet in Buttes-Chaumont Park (photo above). They named their Muslim military group after the park.

The global jihad — nationality, borders, geography, affluence, education, sock color are irrelevant. It’s one thing and one thing only. Islam...

Enemies right in the midst.

Keep reading.

Oh, and it remains to be seen if much will change in France. Don't hold your breath. Remember, the ruling Socialist Party is intent not to, ahem, "inflame" Islamic sensibilities. Here: "French President François Hollande Says #CharlieHebdo Attacks 'Have Nothing to Do With Muslim Religion...'"

How the PC Police Threaten Free Speech

From Nick Gillespie, at the Daily Beast.

#ParisAttacks: Unedited Video Shows French Police Storming Kosher Market, Killing Terrorist Amedy Coulibaly in Hail of Gunfire

Here's the report at London's Daily Mail, "Four kosher deli hostages were killed BEFORE French police went in - as dramatic new video shows the moment SWAT team gunned down terrorist in a storm of bullets as he made his suicidal charge.

Watch the unedited video of the siege at Live Leak, "UNCENSORED Paris Police raid against islamist terrorist at Porte de Vincennes."



PREVIOUSLY: "Deadly Raids End Terror Spree in #ParisAttacks."

Deadly Raids End Terror Spree in #ParisAttacks

Don't miss this phenomenal photo roundup at London's Daily Mail, "Carnage at Paris kosher grocery: Terrified hostages - including women and children - run for their lives as 'at least four' captives die in dramatic end to siege."

Actually, reports indicate that the four hostages were killed before the police stormed the market.

See the Wall Street Journal, "Police Kill Two Suspects in Magazine Massacre; Ally Shot Dead After Four Killed at Kosher Grocery":

PARIS—France’s capital was transformed into a war zone as a three-day manhunt for militants who attacked the magazine Charlie Hebdo ended Friday when security forces in simultaneous raids killed three men suspected in the slaying of 17 people, including four hostages at a kosher grocery.

The carnage played out in a multifront battle that frayed the nerves of a nation already on edge over the state of its security and social cohesion.

By the time the smoke cleared, police had killed Said Kouachi, 34 years old, and his brother Chérif Kouachi, 32—the two gunmen suspected of Wednesday’s attack on the French magazine. Authorities had cornered the French-born brothers at a printing facility near the capital’s main airport.

On the city’s eastern edge, meanwhile, police stormed a kosher grocery where an alleged confederate of the two brothers held several people hostage at gunpoint. The man, Amedy Coulibaly, 32 years old, was killed. Officials said they believed he killed four hostages before police raided the store.

On Thursday, Mr. Coulibaly allegedly shot and killed a female police officer in a southern suburb of Paris. Authorities continued searching Friday for a woman, Hayat Boumediene, in connection with the officer’s killing.

As the violence unfolded Friday, France saw three native sons, hailing from one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations, attacking their countrymen on behalf of terrorist groups a continent away.

Political fallout from the attacks risks deepening the alienation of France’s five million-strong Muslim minority—a social and economic rift that has long made the country a powder keg for unrest.

“France isn’t finished with the threats facing it,” President François Hollande said in an address to the nation. “Unity is our best weapon.”

While under siege Friday, the gunmen conducted phone interviews with French television. Chérif Kouachi said he had trained in Yemen and had received financing by an al Qaeda faction to launch attacks in France. Mr. Coulibaly allegedly told French TV he was acting on behalf of the terror group Islamic State.

The terror crisis began in the early hours of Wednesday morning as two men wearing balaclavas, military fatigues and carrying AK-47 rifles walked into the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo and opened fire. The barrage left 11 people dead, including the publisher and some of France’s most celebrated cartoonists.

Fleeing the scene, the brothers evaded several police cars and killed one officer at point-blank range. In an abandoned getaway car, the brothers left behind Molotov cocktails, a GoPro camera and an important piece of evidence—the national identity card of Said Kouachi.

That clue led investigators to Mr. Kouachi’s brother, Chérif, who had been convicted in 2008 for belonging to a terrorist group. Prosecutors said Chérif Kouachi had also traveled to Yemen in 2011.

The slaughter at Charlie Hebdo sparked anger around the world. The magazine had for years stirred outrage and death threats with its caricatures lampooning Islam, just one of its many targets of satire.

On Thursday, a policewoman directing traffic around a car accident in the southern Parisian suburb of Montrouge was shot and killed. Police homed in on Mr. Coulibaly after recovering a balaclava that contained his DNA.

Mr. Coulibaly later claimed responsibility for the killing, saying he had “synchronized” the move with the Kouachi brothers.

Keep reading.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters: Exterminate the Terrorists and 'Leave Behind Smoking Ruins and Crying Widows...' (VIDEO)

Too bad Colonel Peters isn't seeking the 2016 GOP nomination!

God I love this guy. Watch:

ABC's Terry Moran: The French People, Friends Around the World, 'Will Take Stock of What It Means to Deal, Right Now, with This Infection, This Virus of Radical Jihadist Terror...' (VIDEO)

Well, good thing he didn't say the French, and friends around the world, "will take stock of what it means to deal with this domestic overseas contingency workplace violence situation."

From today's Good Morning America's broadcast, "Paris Terror Attack: 4 Hostages Killed Before Police Staged Final Assault." (Hat Tip: Memeorandum.)

Obama Should Have Called Paris Market Attack What It Is: Anti-Semitism

Yeah, Obama "should have" done a lot more today. See earlier, "President Obama's 'Hilarious' Comments on #CharlieHebdo at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee — UPDATE: Video Added."

And now here comes Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

This week’s bloody events in France have shocked the civilized world. But shock and sadness are not a sufficient response from those entrusted with the responsibility to defend us against Islamist terrorism. That’s why President Obama’s initial statement in response to today’s news was so disappointing. The conspicuous absence of any acknowledgement of the motive of the terrorists or their targets made his remarks empty platitudes rather than a meaningful call for solidarity against a common enemy. The continued refusal of the president to identify Islamist ideology as the foe is undermining efforts to combat this dangerous virus. But the fact that he also failed to label the attack at the Parisian kosher market where four hostages were slaughtered was a case of anti-Semitism sent exactly the wrong signal to a world that is looking to the U.S. for leadership in this struggle and getting precious little of it from this president...

Well, yeah.

January 20, 2017, can't get here fast enough.

RTWT.

Hayat Boumeddiene: From Bikini Babe to France's Most Wanted Woman

At London's Daily Mail, "From bikini babe to burka-clad jihadi fighter with a crossbow: 'Wife' of Kosher supermarket killer becomes France's most wanted woman after going on the run."

And at the Other McCain, "TERROR IN FRANCE: POLICE KILL MUSLIM FANATICS IN STANDOFFS; UPDATE: HUNT FOR FEMALE TERRORIST BOUMEDDIENE."

French President François Hollande Says #CharlieHebdo Attacks 'Have Nothing to Do With Muslim Religion...'

Well, I guess this is ironic, considering how I was just praising the French counterterrorism operations, but the French president is the elected (and temporary) leader of the nation. Members of the the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) are career professionals carrying out policies and procedures that are often decades in the making.

Hollande has been criticized as "weak and indecisive" vis-à-vis homegrown jihad, and boy, it shows. Via CNN:

“Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion,” Pres. Hollande says of #ParisAttacks. http://t.co/7Bxdhozq4H
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) January 9, 2015

'Rocket 88'

According to Wikipedia, "'Rocket 88' was credited to Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were actually Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm."

And why am I blogging about "Rocket 88," you might ask? Well, I was over at Legal Insurrection and I was listening to William's "Video of the Day," Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary."

Interestingly, I was just thinking about the song the other morning while listening to the radio. John Fogerty is both lead singer and lead guitarist on "Proud Mary." While skimming around on Wikipedia, I saw the discussion of Ike and Tina Turner's cover, which then reminded me of the movie "What's Love Got to Do with It." Thinking about that reminded me of how much I loved "Rocket 88" from the film, and so I googled that, heh.

In any case, here you go. The song's generally considered the very "first rock-and-roll record":

President Obama's 'Hilarious' Comments on #CharlieHebdo at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tennessee — UPDATE: Video Added

You know, there are times when leadership requires that we not make light of grave circumstances. President Obama was horribly disrespectful of those killed in France in his remarks today from Knoxville. He joked about college, had the audience all laughing hardy har har. And as soon as his comments were completed --- not even 5 seconds after he'd finished speaking on France --- he broke into another round of jokes.

Sometimes, in some moments, the circumstances call for solemnity. Today is one of those times.

Here's the president's statement delivered today from Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, via the Guardian UK:

Obama: "I want to take a moment out from my comedy routine up here to say something about the terrorism in France (hardy har har, lol!)."
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 9, 2015

“The United States stands with France,” President Barack Obama has said in a speech from Tennessee, cautioning “the French government needs to stay vigilant” as it confronts new threats.

“Events have been fast moving, I just spoke to my counterterrorism advisor, we have been in close touch with the French government. … Since the moment that this tragedy began we directed all of our enforcement and counterterrorism to providing whatever our ally needs.

“We’re hopeful that the immediate threat is now resolved [but] the French government needs to stay vigilant, the situation is fluid.”

Obama then made a broader remarks about what the attacks mean for the France and US going forward:

“France is our oldest ally. I want people of France to know that the United States stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who have been directly impacted. We grieve with you. We fight alongside you to uphold our values, the values that we share – universal values that bind us together as friends and as allies.

“In the streets of Paris, the world has seen once again what terrorists stand for. The have nothing to offer but hatred and suffering. We stand for freedom and hope and the dignity of all human beings. That is what the city of Paris represents to the world and that spirit will endure forever, long after the scourge of terrorism is banished from this world.”

UPDATE: Obama speaks after the Bidens, at about 18 minutes, and then tries out a few jokes before attempting, but failing, to be serious about the terrorist attacks in France.

Media Cowards and the Cartoon Jihad

Once again, from the incomparable Michelle Malkin:

I have never laughed so bitterly as I did while reading Thursday’s lead editorial by the great pretender-defenders of free speech at the New York Times.

Paying obligatory lip service to the 10 cartoonists and staffers of the Paris satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo who were slaughtered for offending Islam, the Times intoned: “It is absurd to suggest that the way to avoid terrorist attacks is to let the terrorists dictate standards in a democracy.”

My GPS tracker of journalistic hypocrisy immediately identified the Times editorial board’s high-altitude location—ensconced atop their own Mt. Everest of absurdity and self-unawareness.

The Fishwrap of Record priggishly refuses to print any of the Islam-provoking art that cost the brave French journalists their lives. In case you forgot (as its own editorialists have), the Times cowered in 2005-2006 when the Mohammed Cartoons conflagration first ignited. And the publication is capitulating again.

Behold this groveling bow to terrorists dictating democracy’s standards:

“Under Times standards,” a newspaper spokesman said in a statement to iMediaEthics.com this week, “we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities. After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today’s story.”

So says the paper that blithely published a Catholic-bashing photo of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung and defended the taxpayer-funded “Piss Christ” exhibit thusly: “A museum is obliged to challenge the public as well as to placate it, or else the museum becomes a chamber of attractive ghosts, an institution completely disconnected from art in our time.”

While they feign free-speech fortitude, what Times editorialists really don’t want to see is their heads completely disconnected from their necks. Neither do editors at the Boston Globe, ABC News, NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC, who won’t publish any possibly, remotely upsetting images of Mohammed, either.

But these quivering double-talkers aren’t even the most laughable of Cartoon Jihad cowards.

The Associated Press wins the pusillanimity prize after invoking the sensitivity card to explain why it refrained from publishing “deliberately provocative” Mo toons—even though the media conglomerate had been selling deliberately provocative “Piss Christ” photos on its website. After the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney pointed out the double standards, AP tried to cover its tracks by yanking the pic.

More absurdity? The New York Daily News pixelated a Mo toon carried by Charlie Hebdo as if it were pornography. CNN did the same in 2006, when it explained it was censoring the offending images “in respect for Islam” and “because the network believes its role is to cover the events surrounding the publication of the cartoons while not unnecessarily adding fuel to the controversy itself.”
And therein lies the cartoon capitulationists’ grand self-delusion. This isn’t about cartoons.

Reminder: The First Mo Toons Wars were instigated in 2005 by demagogue imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips attributed to the Danish Jylland-Postens newspaper (whose actual cartoons criticizing Islam were far more innocuous). The real agenda: Islamist thugs were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey and in between, hundreds died in insane riots under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight. Courageous journalists who stood up to the madness were silenced, jailed, and threatened with beheading.

Cartoons did not start militant Islam’s fire. Neither did the Bushes, Israel, the Satanic Verses, the Pope, beauty pageants, KFC restaurants in the Middle East, Mohammed teddy bears, or a YouTube video.

The Religion of Perpetual Outrage hates all infidels for all reasons for all time. The targeting of Mohammed cartoonists is a convenient excuse to feed the eternal flame of Islamists’ hatred of the West. If it isn’t cartoons, it’s always something else. The grudge is everlasting...

Still more.

France's Impressive Counterterrorist Operation

Well, the operation looked pretty impressive when I first saw the breaking news this morning at 1:00am.

And it appears more impressive still in the light of morning, with the terrorists killed and most of the hostages released unharmed. (There're reports that some hostages were killed; more on that in later updates.)

So obviously I'm on the same page as Max Boot, at Commentary:

If early reports are accurate, the GIGN (National Gendarmerie Intervention Group) pulled off a an impressive counterterrorist success in Paris today, even if it wasn’t as impressive as initially reported. Its commandos raided simultaneously two locations where a total of four jihadists–two of them the perpetrators of the horrific Charlie Hebdo massacre–were holed up with hostages. Apparently they killed three terrorists, while one female accomplice escaped. Sadly, early reports that all of the hostages were freed turned out to be premature; news soon arrived that a number of those held a kosher supermarket had been killed.

Sadly it is much harder to free hostages safely in real life than it is in the “reel life” of the movies and TV–especially when the hostage takers are fanatics seeking martyrdom. Under such circumstances the French forces did the best they could. It’s doubtful that any of the world’s other premier counterterrorist forces–notably SEAL Team Six, Delta Force, the British SAS, the German GSG-9, and the Israeli Sayeret Matkal–could have done any better. And others, notably the Russians, probably would have done much worse–their disregard for human life has become notorious.

The French certainly showed no lack of elan or aggressiveness. The French operators not only killed three terrorists but also the myth of France as a land of “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”–a cruel and crude stereotype born in 1940 when Hitler’s panzers overran the entire country in a few weeks and confirmed, in the minds of some Americans, when France refused to join the Iraq invasion in 2003. This rather ignores some salient facts, including the fact that France showed no surrender while fighting in Indochina and Algeria in the 1940s-’50s. Although France lost those wars, its warriors fought with as much heroism as any army in the world. Indeed, it is worth recalling that prior to 1940, France was a byword for military glory stretching all the way back to the days of Louis XIV and Napoleon.

More to the point, and more recently, France has emerged as a stalwart in the war on terror...

Still more at the link.

Definitely impressive, although I'm not quite as forgiving of France's collapse in 1940 (the French general staff literally just gave up after the Wehrmacht broke through the Ardennes.)

Two Staffers at Hardin County News-Enterprise Thought It'd Be 'Funny' to Write That Cops 'Have a Desire to Shoot Minorities...'

Okay, breaking away from jihad blogging, here's a brief excursion into the state of American journalism.

This really happened, via Jim Romanesko:

Two copy desk staffers [at the Hardin County News-Enterprise in Kentucky] – 23 and 32 years old – have been fired, I’m told. One wrote the “shoot minorities” line on the page proof as a joke and the second – in charge of the front page – put it in the story. One worked at the paper for about six years, the other less than a year.

Here's the newspaper's apology, from editor Ben Sheroan, "Apology: Error should not have happened" (via Memeorandum).

More proof that ideological leftists both populate America's newsrooms while simultaneously destroying the institution of journalism.

As Trauma Grips France, Government Faces Questions Over Intelligence Lapses

At the New York Times (FWIW), "As Trauma Grips France, Government Faces Questions Over Intelligence Lapses":

PARIS — With twin hostage dramas at different ends of Paris by armed jihadists who have killed at least 13 people and traumatized France, the government faced gaping questions on Friday over the failure to thwart such brazen attacks, especially on a well-known target like the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The French intelligence services knew that striking the newspaper and its editor, for their vulgar treatment of the Prophet Muhammad, had been a stated goal of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, through its propaganda journal, Inspire. And they had the Kouachi brothers, Saïd, 34, and Chérif, 32, on their radar as previously involved in jihad-related activities, for which Chérif went to jail in 2008.

The French apparently also knew, or presumably should have known, either on their own or through close intelligence cooperation with the United States, that Saïd had traveled in 2011 to Yemen, where news reports on Friday said he had met with the American-born Anwar al-Awlaki, a member and propagandist for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, who was later killed by an American drone strike.

But Yemen has been an American, not a French priority, intelligence analysts said on Friday. And with French security concentrating on the 1,000 to 2,000 French citizens who have traveled to fight in Iraq and Syria against the Syrian regime or with the Islamic State, it was likely that the Kouachi brothers and their friends — including Amedy Coulibaly, the man said to be involved in the second hostage taking — were put lower on the priority list, the analysts said.

But such reasoning did not answer the basic questions about why the French had not monitored the Kouachi brothers more aggressively, what the brothers were doing between 2011 and now, and why Charlie Hebdo was not better protected. And it raised the question of whether there had been a spectacular failure in American-French intelligence cooperation.

“The problem we face is that even though there are not that many radicalized Muslims in France, there are enough of them to make it difficult to physically follow everyone with a suspicious background,” said Camille Grand, a former French official and director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, a Paris-based group. “It’s one thing to listen to the phone calls or watch their travel, but it’s another to put someone under permanent physical surveillance, or even follow all their phone conversations full time for so many people.”

There simply are not enough police and security officials to keep full monitoring on everyone who goes through prison, said Jean-Charles Brisard from the French Center for Analysis of Terrorism, who had spoken to French security officials. The authorities had Chérif Kouachi under surveillance “for a period of time, but then they judged that there was no threat, or the threat was lower, and they had other priorities,” he said...

Pathetic New York Times Handwringing Over 'Dangerous Moment' for Europe

So precious is the multicultural ideal that big journalistic institutions like the New York Times spew the "dangerous moment" propaganda as if it were Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Let's get real: The danger facing Europe today is more and larger jihadist attacks like the massacre at Charlie Hedbo. The right wing parties likely to benefit politically are not "extreme." They're populist and they're anti-immigrant, for good reason. France has 751 "no-go" areas, which are radical Islamic enclaves in which sharia law has been imposed and French law completely abandoned. There is no assimilation. That's what's dangerous. The Times is pushing a paradigm of "sensitivity" and "inclusion" that reflects the politics of the second half of the 20th century. We're no longer in that time. Europe is at a crisis stage precisely because it hasn't managed the deterioration of its minorities policies. The socialist parties will kowtow to political correctness, and the result will be more bloodshed on a massive scale. Meanwhile, right wing populists will be the only force willing to stem the tide and preserve whatever is left of decent, determined Western culture on the continent.

It's a sad state of affairs.

At the Old Gray Lady, "‘Dangerous Moment’ for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow":

LONDON — The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France’s National Front.

“This is a dangerous moment for European societies,” said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “With increasing radicalization among supporters of jihadist organizations and the white working class increasingly feeling disenfranchised and uncoupled from elites, things are coming to a head.”

Olivier Roy, a French scholar of Islam and radicalism, called the Paris assault — the most deadly terrorist attack on French soil since the Algerian war ended in the early 1960s — “a quantitative and therefore qualitative turning point,” noting the target and the number of victims. “This was a maximum-impact attack,” he said. “They did this to shock the public, and in that sense they succeeded.”

Anti-immigrant attitudes have been on the rise in recent years in Europe, propelled in part by a moribund economy and high unemployment, as well as increasing immigration and more porous borders. The growing resentments have lifted the fortunes of established parties like the U.K. Independence Party in Britain and the National Front, as well as lesser-known groups like Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West, which assembled 18,000 marchers in Dresden, Germany, on Monday.

In Sweden, where there have been three recent attacks on mosques, the anti-immigrant, anti-Islamist Sweden Democrats Party has been getting about 15 percent support in recent public opinion polls.

Paris was traumatized by the attack, with widespread fears of another. “We feel less and less safe,” said Didier Cantat, 34, standing outside the police barriers at the scene. “If it happened today, it will happen again, maybe even worse.”

Mr. Cantat spoke for many when he said the attacks could fuel greater anti-immigrant sentiment. “We are told Islam is for God, for peace,” he said. “But when you see this other Islam, with the jihadists, I don’t see peace, I see hatred. So people can’t tell which is the real Islam.”

Keep reading.

Western Complacency and Denial to Remain Unscathed After #CharlieHebdo Attacks

From Melanie Phillips, at the Jerusalem Post, "As I See It: The Paris massacre and Western funk":

Is this a tipping point? Has the West finally been shaken out of its complacency? The horrific massacre in Paris, in which al-Qaida terrorists systematically targeted and gunned down journalists, cartoonists, and policemen at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in revenge for its mockery of Islam, has shocked Europe by its barbarism and its symbolism.

A core western value, freedom of expression, was snuffed out with contemptuous ease along with 12 innocent lives, among them some of France’s most iconic and beloved cartoonists.

The emotion behind the “Je Suis Charlie” demonstrations, as an expression of solidarity with the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff, was very understandable. But did anyone actually mean it? For what Charlie Hebdo did was what very few people have ever done. In continuing to publish its scurrilous images of Islam and Islamists, Charlie Hebdo had refused to be cowed by Islamist terrorism.

Plainly, therefore, very few people indeed mean “Je Suis Charlie,” since the media response to the massacre has been carefully to obliterate the images Charlie Hebdo published that so offended al-Qaida.

The French have also been declaring defiantly that free speech will never be surrendered. But there has been no free media expression about Islam ever since the 1989 Iranian fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie over his book, The Satanic Verses.

That was when the West sold the pass. In Britain, people supporting Rushdie’s murder were never prosecuted.

As his book was burned on British streets, establishment figures turned on the author for having offended Islam.

In 2006, riots following the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons left scores dead around the world. But virtually every media outlet – except for Charlie Hebdo – refused to republish them.

In 2004, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered on a Netherlands street for making a film criticizing Islam. In 2012, Lars Hedegaard, who founded the Danish Free Press Society after the Muhammad cartoons affair,was shot point blank on his doorstep, although he miraculously survived.

To all these outrages, the West responded by blaming the victims for provoking their attackers. After this week’s Paris massacre, commentators on CNN observed that Charlie Hebdo had been “provoking Muslims” for some time. On The Financial Times website, Tony Barber wrote that “some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo... which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims, but are actually just being stupid.”

(That last clause was subsequently removed).

The fact is that Islamic terrorism and intimidation against the West have been going on for decades, matched by displays of Western weakness which merely encourage an enemy it refuses properly to identify.

Over and over again, the West denies that these attacks have anything to do with Islam. First it blamed poverty and exclusion among Muslims. Then it blamed grievances around the world – Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine.

Then it blamed isolated madmen whose Muslim identity was irrelevant.

In France before Christmas, attacks in which cars were used as battering rams against crowds amid shouts of “Allahu akbar” were said by French authorities to be unconnected with each other.

Yet Muslim violence in France has clearly been out of control for years. Just look at the repeated Islamic pogroms against French Jews, which have driven thousands of them to emigrate. Yet none of those attacks provoked the kind of outrage that followed this week’s atrocity. Is free speech more important than the lives of French Jews? But the West refuses to join up the dots. The Charlie Hebdo attackers shouted “Allahu akbar” and “We are avenging the Prophet Muhammad.”

Yet Obama, Cameron, and Hollande condemned the attack as merely “terrorism,” carefully omitting to say what kind of terrorism this was.

This follows their absurd statements that the Islamic State terrorist group has “nothing to do with Islam” and that “no religion” condones that kind of barbarism.

Really? What links Islamic State, al-Qaida, Hamas, and Boko Haram? It’s a religion beginning with the letter I and ending with M.

A very senior British civil servant once told me that Islamist terrorism couldn’t be about Islam, because that would “demonize” all Muslims. This absurd non-sequitur was like saying the Inquisition had nothing to do with Catholicism, in order not to demonize Catholics.

For sure, many Muslims are not only opposed to Islamist terrorism but are its principal victims. But to pretend that it is not rooted in a legitimate interpretation of the religion, backed up by the historical evidence of centuries of aggressive and violent Islamic conquest, is ridiculous.

If the West cannot even bring itself to acknowledge what it is up against, then it will surely be defeated by it...

Still more.

Playboy Plus: Mash-Up Monday — Most Liked of 2014

Video, "As we welcome the New Year, let's take a look back at the most liked models of Playboy Plus in 2014."

Bill Maher: 'To be a liberal you have to stand up for liberal principles...'

Well, the pathology that's afflicted Western societies isn't any weakness of liberalism. It's political correctness that's a central byproduct of the radical leftist ideology that's seeped into the highest levels of Western power and institutional influence, like the mass media and academe. Conservatives are the true champions of liberalism in the classic sense, and in fact that's the heritage that Maher's referring to and it's the heritage that political Islam seeks to destroy. I don't particularly like Maher because he usually acts more like a leftist than he does a liberal. But the actual descriptive language of politics has been so mangled by nearly a century of leftist Orwellianism no one knows what the fuck they're talking any more.

Leftism and political Islam have in fact cemented an unholy alliance that's becoming more successful by the day in massacring the foundations of free societies.

In any case, for all that, it's an interesting discussion. From Jimmy Kimmel's on Wednesday night:



And at Jihad Watch, "Bill Maher: Hundreds of millions of Muslims support Charlie Hebdo jihad":

This Daily Beast report is clearly angry with Maher for breaking ranks with the Left and telling the truth about Islam and jihad. Maher deserves kudos for standing his ground and continuing to enunciate unpopular truths. I wonder how long it will take him to realize that the Left is not going to rush to his side on this issue.

“Bill Maher: Hundreds of Millions of Muslims Support Attack on ‘Charlie Hebdo,’” by Lloyd Grove, The Daily Beast, January 8, 2015...

French Police Fear #CharlieHebdo Attackers Planning Spectacular 'Martyrdom' Stand

Breaking news, which means take these reports with an abundance of caution.

At London's Daily Mail, "BREAKING NEWS: Shots fired in car chase with Charlie Hebdo killers amid fears they have taken hostages on 'martyrdom mission' towards Paris."

And Sky News has live updates, "Live: Police Chase Charlie Hebdo Killers."

Expect updates...

1:09am PST: See Guardian UK for live updates, "Charlie Hebdo: 'major operation' north-east of Paris in hunt for suspects – live updates."

1:25am PST: Also at Telegraph UK, "Terrorists take hostage 'and kill two people' as police surround 'war zone' industrial complex." Those reports of "two people" killed are not confirmed.

1:35am PST: More, "Watch the police car chase of Paris shooting suspects to industrial estate."

1:43am PST: A graphic from Joe Williams, at ABC News:

Siege at Dammartin-en-Goele close to Forêt de Rez where suspects last seen Thursday #CharlieHebdo (Map: @guardian) pic.twitter.com/EtQPM1VhaA

— Jon Williams (@WilliamsJon) January 9, 2015

#CharlieHebdo Attackers 'Have Long-Standing Ties to al-Qaeda...'

Ed Morrissey reports on yesterday's discussion of the attacks at CBS News This morning, which I was watching. See, "CBS: Charlie Hebdo assassins have “long-standing ties” to al-Qaeda."

And watch the segment, featuring former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell and the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller: "NYPD and CIA insiders on terror attack against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo."

Jeannette Bougrab, Partner of Stéphane Charbonnier, Editor of #CharlieHebdo, Blames Massacre on Inadequate Security

"Inadequate" is putting it mildly. The police showed up unarmed against Islamist jihadists armed to the teeth. And there was one security officer at the newspaper's headquarters.

In any case, watch the clip at Euronews, "Charb's partner, Jeannette Bougrab, blames massacre on inadequate security."

French Manhunt Intensifies in #CharlieHebdo Massacre

At the Wall Street Journal, "Charlie Hebdo Attack: Police Actively Searching Area North of Paris: Thousands of Troops, Police Mobilized; Suspects Were on Terror Watch Lists":

PARIS—Tens of thousands of soldiers and police mobilized across France on Thursday amid a manhunt for two brothers who allegedly killed 12 people in a gruesome attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine, as anxious Parisians stopped for a moment of silence to honor the dead.

President François Hollande raised the terror alert in an area north of Paris where the search was concentrated, after two men matching the description of the suspects were spotted at a gas station. But the two—both of whom have been on watch lists of possible terrorists for years—remained at large.

U.S. and French intelligence believe that one of the two gunmen had received weapons training from an al Qaeda offshoot in Yemen in 2011, U.S. officials said. They added that they haven’t found any intelligence that the group, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, directed, ordered or monitored Wednesday’s attack.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve invited top U.S. and European law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials to Paris this weekend to discuss terror threats, amid concerns that the gunmen appeared to have some military acumen.

Nine people, including relatives of the two suspects, were detained for questioning by police in relation to the investigation, Mr. Cazeneuve told a news conference in Paris, without elaborating.

The two suspects in Wednesday’s spree of violence were identified as 34-year-old Said Kouachi and his brother, Chérif Kouachi, 32, both French citizens. Mr. Cazeneuve said both were known to French security and were under surveillance, but no incriminating evidence had been gathered on them.

The minister said the elder brother had been formally identified from a photograph as one of the attackers. His national identity card was found in an abandoned Citroën that had been used as a getaway car.

While Said Kouachi had no police record, his brother had been sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2008 for being part of a terror group, prosecutors said.

Both have been in a U.S. database of suspected terrorists—and on the U.S. no-fly list—for years as well. For the younger brother, that was due to his conviction in France, while the other’s name had surfaced in other terrorism-related probes, according to U.S. officials.

A third suspect identified by police turned himself in late Wednesday. His relationship to the others was unclear.

Helicopters buzzed across the region north of Paris early Thursday after two men resembling the Kouachi brothers were spotted near the town of Villers-Cotterêts, about 50 miles from the capital. But by midafternoon French television showed most of the police had left...

More.

A Consequential Terror Attack in Paris — #CharlieHebdo

From Max Boot, at Commentary:

The U.S. has 9/11. Spain has 11-M (the March 11, 2004, bombings of the Madrid commuter trains which killed 191). Britain has 7/7 (a reference to the July 7, 2005 bombings which killed 52 people taking public transportation in London). And now, on a slightly smaller but still horrific scale, France has 1/7: the assault by three masked gunmen on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, which left 12 people dead.

What all of these events have in common is, of course, the Islamist ideology which animated the killers–a ruthless willingness to kill the innocent in pursuit of far-fetched religious and political objectives. In all three cases jihadist fanatics saw Western nations, whether the U.S., Britain, or France, as obstacles to their designs–and understandably so, because all three back moderate regimes in the Middle East and have intervened with their own armed forces to fight the forces of terrorism, whether in Mali, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

Of these attacks, only one–9/11–so far has been proven to have been directed by a terrorist organization based abroad: al-Qaeda, which at the time enjoyed sanctuary in Afghanistan...

More.

How to Answer the Paris Terror Attack — #CharlieHebdo

From Ayaan Hirsi Ali, at the Wall Street Journal, "The West must stand up for freedom—and acknowledge the link between Islamists’ political ideology and their religious beliefs":

After the horrific massacre Wednesday at the French weekly satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, perhaps the West will finally put away its legion of useless tropes trying to deny the relationship between violence and radical Islam.

This was not an attack by a mentally deranged, lone-wolf gunman. This was not an “un-Islamic” attack by a bunch of thugs—the perpetrators could be heard shouting that they were avenging the Prophet Muhammad. Nor was it spontaneous. It was planned to inflict maximum damage, during a staff meeting, with automatic weapons and a getaway plan. It was designed to sow terror, and in that it has worked.

The West is duly terrified. But it should not be surprised.

If there is a lesson to be drawn from such a grisly episode, it is that what we believe about Islam truly doesn’t matter. This type of violence, jihad, is what they, the Islamists, believe.

There are numerous calls to violent jihad in the Quran. But the Quran is hardly alone. In too much of Islam, jihad is a thoroughly modern concept. The 20th-century jihad “bible,” and an animating work for many Islamist groups today, is “The Quranic Concept of War,” a book written in the mid-1970s by Pakistani Gen. S.K. Malik. He argues that because God, Allah, himself authored every word of the Quran, the rules of war contained in the Quran are of a higher caliber than the rules developed by mere mortals....

How we respond to this attack is of great consequence. If we take the position that we are dealing with a handful of murderous thugs with no connection to what they so vocally claim, then we are not answering them. We have to acknowledge that today’s Islamists are driven by a political ideology, an ideology embedded in the foundational texts of Islam. We can no longer pretend that it is possible to divorce actions from the ideals that inspire them.

This would be a departure for the West, which too often has responded to jihadist violence with appeasement. We appease the Muslim heads of government who lobby us to censor our press, our universities, our history books, our school curricula. They appeal and we oblige. We appease leaders of Muslim organizations in our societies. They ask us not to link acts of violence to the religion of Islam because they tell us that theirs is a religion of peace, and we oblige.

What do we get in return? Kalashnikovs in the heart of Paris. The more we oblige, the more we self-censor, the more we appease, the bolder the enemy gets.

There can only be one answer to this hideous act of jihad against the staff of Charlie Hebdo. It is the obligation of the Western media and Western leaders, religious and lay, to protect the most basic rights of freedom of expression, whether in satire on any other form. The West must not appease, it must not be silenced. We must send a united message to the terrorists: Your violence cannot destroy our soul.

Nigel Farage Slams Multiculturalism for Creating 'Fifth Column' in West

He's right, of course.

But just saying so inflames the terror-enabling left --- and even the sadly accommodating David Cameron.

See Blazing Cat Fur, "How dare David Cameron attack Nigel Farage for telling the truth about multiculturalism."

And watch: "UKIP's Farage: Multiculturalism Creating 'Fifth Column' in West."

First Photo from Inside #CharlieHebdo Massacre

From London's Daily Mail, "First picture inside the blood-stained Charlie Hebdo newsroom: Chilling image reveals aftermath of massacre that left 12 dead."

Plus lots more photos. Great coverage.

Chilling photo of #CharlieHebdo newsroom reveals aftermath of massacre http://t.co/stad9oY4Xz pic.twitter.com/sK5ffMfBAG
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) January 8, 2015

Al-Qaeda is Plotting Paris-Style Attack Against Britain

Well, of course.

Who would think otherwise?

At Telegraph UK, "Al-Qaeda plotting attack on Britain":

After the Charlie Hebdo attack, the head of MI5 warns of a Paris-style atrocity on UK soil.

Al-Qaeda is planning a Paris-style terrorist atrocity against Britain, according to the head of MI5.

Andrew Parker, the Director General of the Security Service, warned that the threat of a “mass casualty attack” was growing and that intelligence pointed to the existence of specific plots.

Security was stepped up on Wednesday at British ports, and armed police were put on patrol at the Eurostar terminal at London’s St Pancras station.

Mr Parker warned that although three terrorist plots had been foiled in recent months, it was almost inevitable that one would eventually succeed.

MI5 officers have increased surveillance of British fanatics who they fear may launch copycat attacks, after 12 people were slaughtered by al-Qaeda gunmen at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

Intelligence has shown that the Syrian arm of a resurgent al-Qaeda is planning similar outrages against the UK, possibly by British jihadists who have already returned from fighting in Syria or Iraq.

They include plans to blow up a passenger jet; Mumbai-style shootings in crowded places; or even hit-and-run attacks using vehicles.

Mr Parker said the number of random “crude and potentially deadly” plots from “lone wolf” extremists was increasing.

In a stark warning, he said: “Although we and our partners try our utmost, we know we cannot hope to stop everything.”

It is feared that a lack of cooperation from internet companies means that there is a risk of terrorists slipping through the net because MI5 cannot track them.

Mr Parker warned that terrorists may soon be able “to operate beyond our reach” as he renewed calls for enhanced access to digital communications...

Craven Capitulation to Islamic Jihad: 'It Never Ends...'

Via the incomparable Michelle Malkin:

#tbt The brilliant Cox & Forkum on Cartoon Jihad cowards in 2006. It never ends==> http://t.co/ED68kvbr3b pic.twitter.com/5oVjjMc6Sw

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 8, 2015

Claire Berlinski on #CharlieHebdo in Time

This is just her initial take, "The Irreplaceable Staff of Charlie Hebdo."

Interesting that Time won Ms. Berlinski's initial publishing sweepstakes. She's very clear that her reporting commands top dollar. Here: "A First-Hand Account of Terrorist Attack in Paris — #CharlieHebdo."

Jessica Chastain 'simply doesn't get enough mention among the gentleman ogling set...'

I've seen Ms. Chastain in advertisements for "A Most Dangerous Year," and she looks absolutely fabulous.

She might be an award winner as well (or at least the movie might be).

At Egotastic!, "Jessica Chastain Cleavetastic Hotness as Awards Season Opens Up."

BONUS: "Jessica Chastain Covered Topless Shoot in Extraordinarily Hot Interview Magazine October."

Plus, a video, "A Conversation with Jessica Chastain & Oscar Isaac."

French Police Close In on #CharlieHebdo Suspects

At Telegraph UK, "Paris Charlie Hebdo attack: Police appear to be closing in on Said and Cherif Kouachi":

Several hundred heavily armed riot officers and special forces circling a large forest where the two brothers are believed to be.

Police appeared to be closing on Thursday night on the French brothers responsible for Wednesday’s terrorist attack, as several hundred heavily armed riot officers and special forces began circling a large forest in the east of the country.

A helicopter was flying over the Forêt de Retz, an ancient woodland that covers an area greater than Paris.

A convoy of police had pulled up at a large farmhouse outside the village of Longpont, near Reims, and were seen preparing to scour the area. Local residents were warned to stay indoors.

Thursday's operation appeared to be the beginning of the end of the massive manhunt, which has seen 88,000 police deployed to find the culprits behind the worst terrorist attack in France in 50 years.

The lights of the Eiffel Tower were turned off on Thursday night, in memory of the victims, and candles continued to blaze at a series of spontaneous shrines across the French capital, as the country struggled to come to terms with what some commentators described as “France’s September 11”.

The fugitives, Said Kouachi, 34, and his 32-year-old brother Chérif, were wanted for the murder of 12 people at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine known for its provocative cartoons.

They fled by car and were last seen on Wednesday night in Pantin, a suburb in the north-east of Paris, where they abandoned their getaway vehicle and hijacked another.

The brothers were identified thanks to an identity card left in their getaway car, and their names were widely spread in the media, alongside that of Hamyd Mourad, Said’s 18-year-old brother-in-law.

Jihadi flags and petrol bombs were said to have been found in the car. On Thursday night it was becoming apparent that Chérif had extensive contacts with known jihadis, and had himself been in prison on terrorism charges.

Among those in his circle were members of the notorious Buttes-Chaumont network, which was based in Paris’s 19th arrondissement and saw dozens of young men recruited in the early 2000s to fight in Iraq.

One of the network’s masterminds, Salim Benghalem, has been named by the US state department as among its 10 most wanted terrorists, and is described as currently acting as an “executioner” for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Chérif had been living for several years in Gennevilliers, a suburb to the north-west of Paris, and on Wednesday evening police raided his flat, with forensic detectives combing the site...

More.

Sen. Barbara Boxer Won't Seek Reelection in 2016

Good riddance.

At LAT, "Sen. Boxer, liberal lion from California, to retire after 2016," and "Congressional colleagues, others heap praise on Barbara Boxer."

Despite her seniority, Boxer's an also-ran blowhard who pushed Utopian far-left projects. Her main legacy after 30 in Congress is the dubious distinction of having floated more bogus checks than almost all others in the House banking scandal in the early 1990s. That corruption brought some change, if the rest of her career didn't. Here's the story from Flap's Blog, "CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer – THE BOUNCER."
DLTDHYOTWO!

Measles, One of Most Contagious Diseases Known, Had Big 2014 in California

A number of people who visited Disneyland in December were exposed. And the measles can be deadly, especially for small children who're not fully inoculated.

An interesting piece, at LAT, "Latest measles outbreak highlights a growing problem in California."

California Bullet Train Groundbreaking in Fresno

At the Los Angeles Times, "Gov. Brown lauds bullet train project at groundbreaking ceremony."

It's a boondoggle.

From the Letters to the Editor, "Why high-speed rail in California will fail":

To the editor: As an old, long retired railroad executive in the U.S. and Canada, I can predict that Gov. Jerry Brown's high-speed rail line will fail and cost taxpayers plenty for years. ("After two-year delay, construction on California's bullet train is set to start," Jan. 4)

My company participated in planning several similar projects in different counties. We always concluded that rail was only ideal for passengers when there were plenty of freight trains to help pay for it.

Since there's very little freight between Los Angeles and San Francisco, you can bet your boots that taxpayers will have to cover the costs for years and years. Busses and planes are far more economical. The only self-supporting rail line in the U.S. is the busy commuter line between Boston, New York and Washington.

If Brown is looking for a legacy, the money for high-speed rail would be far more useful if spent on water for Southern California.

Dick Ettington
Palos Verdes Peninsula

And be sure to watch the video. KCBS Los Angeles sounds almost like Fox News, heh.

Federal Judge Strikes Down California's Ban on Foie Gras

Well, for once a bit of decent political news out of California.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Foie gras can go back on California menus, judge rules":

Foie gras can go back on the menu.

U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson issued a ruling Wednesday overturning California’s law banning the sale of the fatty goose liver.

“I’ve been jumping up and down for about 90 minutes,” said Napa Valley chef Ken Frank, who was not a party to the suit, but has been active in the pro-foie-gras movement.

Foie gras was outlawed in California by a bill that passed the state Legislature in 2004 and went into effect in 2012.

The ban had been challenged by the Hot’s Restaurant Group in California (which includes Hot’s Cantina in Northridge, Four Daughters in Manhattan Beach and Hot’s Kitchen in Hermosa Beach); Hudson Valley Foie Gras, a producer in New York; and a group of Canadian foie gras farmers called Association des Eleveurs de Canards et d’Oies du Quebec.

The judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it interferes with an existing federal law that regulates poultry products.

Last year, the courts rejected a different argument against the state ban -- that it improperly tried to regulate interstate commerce. But the new argument -- referred to by lawyers as “preemption” -- succeeded. The state could appeal Wilson’s ruling, but, for now, foie gras devotees can celebrate.

“Foie gras is legal in California and will be on my menu tonight,” said Frank, chef at La Toque restaurant. “I haven’t been without foie gras a single day since the ban went into effect, but tonight is the first time I’ve been able to charge for it.”

Frank had been sending diners complimentary servings of foie gras along with a glass of wine and a card explaining that “this is a gift and an act of political protest against a law we think is unwise."

“Tonight we’re going to tear the cards up and have a hell of a party.”

A coalition of animal rights groups, including the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Humane Society, released a joint statement vowing to appeal. “The state clearly has the right to ban the sale of the products of animal cruelty, and we expect the 9th Circuit will uphold this law, as it did in the previous round of litigation. We are asking the California attorney general to file an immediate appeal."...

Yes, because no one hates a good, righteous food-loving party as much as tantrum-throwing leftists.

Still more.

Sean Hannity Battles Islamic Hate-Preacher Anjem Choudary (VIDEO)

Following-up to my earlier entry, "Anjem Choudary: Whoever Insults Muhammed 'Kill Him'."

Watch the debate from last night's "Hannity," at the link.

Paris Attacks Weren't 'Senseless Violence'

I saw the president's comments yesterday and once again recoiled at his remarks about the "senseless violence of the few."

It's simply not "senseless violence." Indeed, the attacks were extremely methodical and drove home the message that Islam is intent to destroy the West's most important foundations. The terrorists will stop at nothing and they'll kill fellow Muslims who stand in their way, those who --- despite their faith --- stand for the rule of law against militant Islamic jihad.

So I'm glad Jonathan Tobin picked up on precisely this yesterday, at Commentar, "Paris Attack Wasn’t “Senseless Violence”":

President Obama’s condemnation of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office today in Paris rightly referred to the perpetrators as “terrorists” and expressed solidarity with France even if it did come in a tone expressed with his usual lack of emotion. The official statement issued later also properly labeled it an act of terrorism. But the problem isn’t whether the administration is ready, as it was initially reluctant to do after Benghazi, to speak of terrorism, as it is the president’s refusal to discuss the motivation of the attackers and readiness to speak of it as the “senseless violence of the few.” This wasn’t senseless, Mr. President. Indeed, based on the administration’s past lukewarm defense of freedom of speech against Islamist attacks, it made a great deal of sense for terrorists to think they could get away with this atrocity.

Throughout the last two decades during which Islamist terrorists have been waging a war against the West, the United States government has always been properly reluctant to speak of the conflict as one between the American people and the religion of Islam. The U.S. has no argument with its millions of loyal Muslim citizens or with any faith per se. Nor does it have a brief for conflict with the many Muslim countries with which it enjoys warm relations. The arguments of both al-Qaeda and ISIS and their sympathizers, which speak of American wars “against Muslims,” are vicious libels. The wars, in which the U.S. has engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention in Bosnia before that, were waged to free Muslims. It is the terrorists who wish to silence and enslave Muslims in their nightmare vision of a new caliphate, not the Americans.

But that sensible reluctance to grant the terrorists their wish by allowing them to make this a war of Muslim versus non-Muslim should not extend to blindness about what is motivating the terrorists. As much as we may hope that Islamists don’t represent the views of most Muslims, it is ridiculous for the president or any other American official to be issuing statements (as they have at times) in which Washington pretends to be the authority on what is or is not authentic Islam. Suffice it to say that Islamists appear to have the support of tens of millions of Muslims in the Middle East as well as elsewhere and it is futile for any American president to be declaring them mistaken about their faith...

Amazing how that happens ever time as well, heh.

Continue reading.

A First-Hand Account of Terrorist Attack in Paris — #CharlieHebdo

From Claire Berlinski, at Ricochet, "First-Hand Account From The Terrorist Attack on Charlie-Hebdo":

Let me use the words I am not allowed to use on Ricochet. You motherfuckers. We will kill you. Every one of you. Believe it. #JeSuisCharlie

— Claire Berlinski (@ClaireBerlinski) January 7, 2015

I'm sorry to respond to so many messages so impersonally. I'll answer by tomorrow. For now this sums it up. https://t.co/rOkgSpZLSe

— Claire Berlinski (@ClaireBerlinski) January 7, 2015

If you've been trying to reach me, you should have a response by now. If I missed you, my apologies: Summary here. https://t.co/47zAIBxHIP.

— Claire Berlinski (@ClaireBerlinski) January 8, 2015

If I sound incoherent, it’s because I am shaken. The reasons will be obvious.

I had no intention of reporting on this from the scene of the Charlie-Hebdo massacre. I was walking up Boulevard Richard Lenoir to meet a friend who lives in the neighborhood. But the moment I saw what I did, I knew for sure what had happened. A decade in Turkey teaches you that. That many ambulances, that many cops, that many journalists, and those kinds of faces can mean only one thing: a massive terrorist attack.

I also knew from the location just who’d been attacked: Charlie-Hebdo, the magazine known for many things, but, above all, for its fearlessness in publishing caricatures of Mohamed. They’d been firebombed for this in 2011, but their response — in effect — was the only one free men would ever consider: “As long as we’re alive, you’ll never shut us up.”

They are no longer alive. They managed to shut them up.

The only thing I didn’t immediately know was how many of them had died...

Don't miss the remainder. Claire's a good woman. Really, really good.

And check the links at the Twitter embeds.

Mark Steyn: 'We will be retreating into a lot more self-censorship...' (VIDEO)

...if the rest of the Western media 'doesn't man and decide to disperse the risk' of mocking the fuck out of Muhammad.

Watch: "Mark Steyn Blasts NY Times for Not Showing Muhammad Cartoon. Mark Steyn Kelly File."

Stéphane Charbonnier Stood Up to Terror

From Pamela Geller, at Atlas Shrugs, "Charb is a War Hero."

And at Telegraph UK, "How Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier stood up to terror":

Charlie Hebdo's editor Stéphane Charbonnier was among the 10 journalists killed today during an attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo's offices in Paris. Two police officers were also killed in the attack.

Charlie Hebdo's staple is provocation – and it pokes fun at popes, presidents as well as the Prophet Mohammed.

The satirical weekly has a history of drawing outrage across the Muslim world with crude cartoons of Islam's holiest figure.

The magazine's offices were firebombed in November 2011 after it published a spoof issue that "invited" Mohammed to be its guest editor and put his caricature on the cover.

A year later, the magazine published more Mohammed drawings amid an uproar over an anti-Muslim film.

The cartoons depicted Mohammed naked and in demeaning or pornographic poses. As passions raged, the French government defended free speech even as it rebuked Charlie Hebdo for fanning tensions.

The small-circulation weekly leans toward the left and takes pride in making acerbic commentary on world affairs through cartoons and spoof reports.

Charbonnier defended the Muhammad cartoons in 2012. "Mohammed isn't sacred to me," said Charbonnier, who used the pen name Charb. "I don't blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don't live under Quranic law."

Islam is not alone in being singled out by Charlie Hebdo's satire. Past covers include retired Pope Benedict XVI in amorous embrace with a Vatican guard; former French President Nicolas Sarkozy looking like a sick vampire; and an Orthodox Jew kissing a Nazi soldier.

The magazine occasionally publishes investigative journalism, taking aim at France's high and mighty.

Charlie Hebdo has come under pressure ever since its 2011 Mohammed issue. Its website has been hacked. It faced a lawsuit over the prophet cartoons. Riot police once guarded its offices. Charb lived under police protection – and his bodyguard was killed Wednesday along with another officer.

Charb told Le Monde newspaper two years ago: "I'd rather die standing than live on my knees."

'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' for Real — #CharlieHebdo

Oh man, too true.

On Twitter:

THIS is what "Hands Up Don't Shoot" looks like @KurtSchlichter @GARock945 @Rene_gadeCowboy @GayPatriot @chadfelixg pic.twitter.com/rpUrMbeutk

— Appelez-moi Charlie (@WarrenPeas64) January 7, 2015

Emily Ratajkowski Tweets #JeSuisCharlie

She's really, really cool.

#JeSuisCharlie pic.twitter.com/z8kE9lkhEa

— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) January 8, 2015